


The House, 1989

by kayeblaise



Series: SVT Immortals AU [10]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Team as Family, also i'm reserving my right to use one well-earned f bomb so please enjoy, but things also come together, except they sort of really are and i love them, none of them are human, not necessary to read other parts to read this but for once i recommend it, things get bad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 25,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25392538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayeblaise/pseuds/kayeblaise
Summary: “The house felt hollow and broken open like it had been abandoned for years, though they’d only been gone the afternoon.”After the events of “Witch at the Well,” S. Coups and Wonwoo return home.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Hong Jisoo | Joshua/Yoon Jeonghan, Jeon Wonwoo/Wen Jun Hui | Jun
Series: SVT Immortals AU [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/667244
Comments: 122
Kudos: 86





	1. The House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (For every time you’ve finished a half-told story of mine and wondered: huh, I thought that might have been a hint.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A special appreciation to those who have been around long enough to recognize the title. And welcome to anyone giving this series a shot. You don’t have to have read the other stories to read this one, but some of the lead up is significant. Thank you for being on the journey so far. This story isn’t the last, but it closes a chapter many years in the making.

_Jeonghan stared down the crooked way that lead from the road to the bottom of the hill. The beginnings of a dilapidated house poked out from under a cage of brush and vines._

_A small smile twitched onto his face._

_“You don’t want anything to do with that.” An old man with one eye permanently closed was standing at the side of the road. He leant on a walking stick and a half dozen sheep waited obediently behind him._

_“Why is that?” Jeonghan asked. He had been sent ahead to find a suitable place. The others would be coming after him in a week’s time._

_“Boy drowned in the well some years back. They say it’s cursed.”_

_Jeonghan looked back at the sky above the house. The clouds tossed shade onto the lifeless exterior. The overhanging of the thatched roof deepened the shadows at windows that were dark with neglect. They could fix that with time. Replace the roof. Brighten the interior. Bring the whole thing to life. “Cursed?” he wondered, letting his eyes explore the crinkling of the white stucco peeling from the sides. “That will do nicely.”_

_The old man grumbled his unhappiness. He swept his stick in front of him to shoo the sheep along and left Jeonghan admiring the abandoned house at the bottom of the hill._

_____

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Wonwoo commented once they began to descend toward the house. He fiddled with the cool metal casing of the switchblade in his pocket. The ease of the afternoon’s activities made it seem silly now. 

In lieu of an answer, S. Coups held out his arm and stopped to sniff the air. The collapsed stone wall that marked the property line still separated them from the house. “Something’s wrong.”

Wonwoo squinted toward the familiar façade. The aster was shaking in the autumn air. The blackthorn hedge was bright with greens and blues. All seemed well.

In a scrape of shoes against gravel, S. Coups took off. He cleared the stone wall and whipped through the garden.

“Hey! What—” Wonwoo gave up on his halfhearted question as S. Coups disappeared inside. 

Wonwoo relented and moved after him, deliberately using each of the porch steps when he reached them. He reminded himself to turn on the lights for Hoshi at dusk like he’d promised, then paused at the open door to try to see whatever had sent S. Coups running.

The door was tilted slightly away from its top hinge, but it was probably nothing. The house was old and in constant need of repair. The hinge wasn’t responsible for the prickle of unease that now ran along Wonwoo’s arms. He stepped over the threshold, eyes tracing up and over the walls and the ceiling for any sign of strangeness. Nothing was out of place, yet the building felt hollow and broken open like it had been abandoned for years, though they’d only been gone the afternoon.

S. Coups darted back into sight from the kitchen, disregarding all caution as he called out names, his search frantic.

“Coups.” 

At the appeal, he caught himself on the balls of his toes.

“What’s going on,” Wonwoo beckoned, trying to keep calm against the wild storm of S. Coups’s eyes.

S. Coups leant searchingly into the dining room as he paced back to the door. He seemed barely in control of the volume of his voice when he said, “I’m telling you, Wonwoo, something isn’t right. I felt it in the woods and now Jeonghan’s not answering and,” he gestured around, finally lowering his voice, “ _Where is everyone_? No Mingyu, no Joshua, no Woozi—”

“No, I get it, I get it.” Wonwoo looked over S. Coups’s head at the too quiet household and felt the wind rush through from the open door behind him. He didn’t doubt what S. Coups was saying. He felt the wrongness in the air.

“Okay,” Wonwoo decided; they didn’t need to discuss things any longer. He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the knife he’d brought into the woods. S. Coups nodded and did the same, pointing to the floor above them. They separated with new caution, Wonwoo slipping through the dining room alone to explore the rest of the downstairs. 

As he passed from room to room, he tried to evaluate if things seemed out of place. He couldn’t decide if certain pictures had always been crooked, or if it was harmless that a drawer had been left open or a plate left sitting on the table. Their home felt like it had been deserted in the middle of living, like the rapture had come and taken everyone up into the sky. In Jun’s room, he found a magazine still open on the bed, but no one was there.

The pages of the magazine ruffled lightly, and he traced it back to the window which was open across the room. He frowned deeply and moved toward the casement, his pulse jogging. Standing out against the white trim of the windowsill were streaks of red dragged like the wild strokes of a paintbrush. 

He lifted his hand and watched as the stain at the window’s edge lined up with the shape of his fingers. He dropped his gaze and found a lighter lying on the floor and a dark pool of what could only have been blood.

“ _Wonwoo_!” S. Coups’s distant shout startled him and he flew across the house toward it. Something was terribly wrong.

. . .

S. Coups didn’t care that the blood was getting on his hand or the cuffs of his sleeves. He heard the squeak of the railing and imagined Wonwoo taking the stairs three at a time.

There were drums pounding in the back of his head. 

He tried not to press against the awful series of cuts, but Joshua was out cold. He wouldn’t feel it. The lines in his neck were obscured by dried and drying blood but they had a definitive pattern. He read them, acid bubbling in his stomach. Someone had come into their home and hurt the people he loved and they were bragging about it.

“Coups,” Wonwoo was standing just inside the room.

“I promised him that he was safe.”

Wonwoo was struck dumb. He looked around Joshua’s room, trying to see any sign of what might have happened but found the room undisturbed. “Coups,” he began uncertainly, “I didn’t find anyone downstairs.”

S. Coups’s expression was full of pain and anger when he looked up from the floor to confront Wonwoo’s words. There was a suppressed growl sitting in the back of his throat now and it wouldn’t go away. “He didn’t do this, Wonwoo. Whoever did carved ‘fair trade’ into his _neck_.”

Wonwoo opened his mouth to defend himself. He hadn’t been trying to blame Joshua—but then the words sank in fully. The silence turned into a long-drawn inhale as his expression buckled into alarm. “Oh gods, Seungcheol.” The echo in the words couldn’t be a mistake.

“What?”

When the gathering of meaning was finally released into the air it sounded thin and reedy, “It’s the demon from St. Marks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n So, what if the epilogue to Witch at the Well was secretly an entire story and it tied up loose ends and things got crazy?  
> For new readers, this is the St. Mark's Story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10725285/chapters/23765652  
> (For old readers who like a refresher, the reference is chapter 8!)  
> \--Love and appreciation. <3  
> (No archive warnings on this one so check in if you're ever concerned!)


	2. A Familiar Voice

_Joshua._

He’d learned not to listen to the ones that knew his name.

In all the years since the asylum, he’d learned those were the voices that were never real. They’d have no reason to know his name. 

“Go away.” It was more an annoyance now than anything. He pulled out a few notes from the guitar, finding a satisfaction in it even if he hadn’t learned to play.

 _Joshua_. It was louder this time.

He stood, returning the instrument to its stand at his bedside. It had been there since he rescued it from the closet at the end of the hall with the old coats and umbrellas and other forgotten things. The house had endless corners and cupboards and attic spaces filled with possessions that had outgrown their usefulness. Joshua had taken to sorting through them every now and then to grant some second lives.

There was a buzzing in the air, not unlike the heavy vibration of the untuned strings. It wobbled on the edge of detectability. Now his heart was in his throat. He was not entirely sure the voice hadn’t been familiar. 

Light was glancing off the side of his face. The snap back to the present startled him; he wasn’t sure how long he’d been spaced out, staring past his own image in the mirror. 

The table lamp on the dresser emitted a buzz that rose and fell with the intensity of the light. That was all it was. He exhaled. He was seriously losing it. He unplugged the cord from the outlet in the hope that whatever had roiled up the dark blue inside of him would fade if he ignored it long enough. He had felt submerged for days, but he’d tried not to spend too long on it. Things were good. They had been for a long time. He’d made peace with the power inside of him.

In the moment that his reflection flashed past the mirror there was another. He spun to face it and the punch hit him into blindness _._ The thrum of electric energy surged to break free from under his skin and he held onto it long enough to get out a name.

. . .

_Jeonghan_

He perked up from the chair, bringing his feet to the floor slowly as he closed his book. Jeonghan wasn’t sure he’d heard anything at all, the impression of his name cut short.

“Josh?” Whether Joshua had called him or not, he wasn’t touching back at all now. It wasn’t entirely out of the question. Jeonghan wouldn’t burst in uninvited if he’d misheard. But he felt a strangeness as he placed the book at the edge of the coffee table, already halfway to his feet. It wasn’t just the impression of his name that he’d heard, it was a flash of starburst and then silence. If Joshua had called for him, why couldn’t Jeonghan reach him now?

 _Woozi,_ he called instead.

The fae’s thoughts were always sharp but they were muted from across the house. _What?_

Woozi’s attempts at distaste were all for show. There was no true anger there. 

_Check on the kids, will you?_ The request made, he did not wait to listen for an answer as he snapped his thoughts shut. He would need to focus, now.

He scooted around the coffee table, eyes trailing along the ceiling as he headed for the stairs.

_ _ _

“How do you know it’s him?”

Wonwoo paced violently in the short circuit that the room allowed, trying to keep his volume under control. “It’s a message. Something he said when we got Joshua from the asylum.”

At the word asylum, S. Coups’s went ashen. He looked down at Joshua and knew it was only a day since he’d sat with him and Jeonghan on the kitchen floor and tried to talk about it. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The darkening of a bruise just visible at Joshua's cheekbone gave rise to fresh anger. “I thought that you killed him.”

“You can’t kill them,” Wonwoo dismissed, biting at his nails, “you can only send them away.”

S. Coups rubbed at his forehead in half frustration and half distraction, a pit opening in his stomach. “This is all my fault.”

Wonwoo didn’t seem convinced by S. Coups’s self-flagellation, barely pulling away from his own pacing to glance in his direction.

“They both tried to tell me something was wrong and I didn’t even notice,” he started to explain, not sure where to begin. “You remember years back when I had that page from the grimoire and I told you that it wasn’t important?”

“You were lying,” Wonwoo quipped distractedly, his thoughts pinning through doubts that maybe he’d gotten it wrong. That after so many decades he really had lost his touch. How could he have found them now?

S. Coups agreed too easily, no longer feeling the right to be offended. Of course Wonwoo had known. “I should have stayed home.”

“What was the spell for?”

“It was a ritual to protect the land or something.”

This finally got Wonwoo’s attention. “You _hallowed the grounds_.”

“No?” S. Coups answered uncertainly, now scratching violently at his hair, “I don’t know, it was a land marriage or something. To help protect the household so that Jeonghan wasn’t doing it alone. And that’s what he was trying to tell me when he said Hoshi leaving wasn’t as important. And I didn’t even listen. I just left. Maybe if I’d been here—”

They jolted at a harsh inhale as Joshua came to life. He fought against S. Coups’s arms around him, eyes flickering on the edge of dark blue.

“Joshua, it’s okay! It’s alright. It’s just me.”

“I’m sorry—” Joshua gasped as he struggled to recognize in disjointed order where he was and who was there. His back pressed against S. Coups and he burnt hot like a furnace. “I tried to—" He stopped to hiss and raise his hand to his neck.

Joshua finally seemed to become aware of the fact that S. Coups was behind him and that Wonwoo was standing above him and that he was on the floor, but that seemed to be the end of his awareness. When he pulled his hand away and saw blood, he stared at his fingers like he was offended to find it there.

S Coups wanted to turn him away from it. He didn’t know how to help him face what he’d forgotten. S. Coups licked his lips uncertainly before he prompted, “What did you try?”

Joshua twisted to grab hold of S. Coups’s eyes, suddenly present but too much so, “I tried to warn them.” And it was terrifyingly clear that Joshua didn’t know what he meant.

S. Coups looked up at Wonwoo, unsure of what to do.

Wonwoo didn’t seem to know either. “Do you know where everyone else is?” he tried.

Joshua seemed confused by the premise of the question. Then in a slow drip of understanding, the look in his eyes changed, and it was enough that he didn’t have to answer as his breath went shallow, falling into the fog he so often had in the decades since the asylum. His hand floated back to his neck, just barely running his thumb against the ridge of the cuts. He didn’t flinch now like he was too far away to feel it. His index finger circled a spot just behind his ear. “He’s here, isn’t he?”

It was clear that Joshua didn’t remember, but that he knew. S. Coups could imagine what that felt like, and he was honest in sharing the fear in his own eyes when Joshua looked at him. “Yeah,” he answered quietly, “we think so.”

Joshua’s hand stayed covering over his neck, and S. Coups took a moment to press his mouth to the side of his hair and utter a reassurance. 

Wonwoo suddenly imagined the carved words healing into scars and didn’t want Joshua to live with that. “I’ll get something to help,” he said ambiguously. And part of his leaving was to simply escape and part of it was to give himself the space to think without the emotional tension that flooded the room. 

He didn’t know why Joshua had been left behind while the others were nowhere to be found, but the message wasn’t simple, wanton cruelty. He didn’t think any of this was S. Coups’s fault, either, contrary to what he claimed. S. Coups hadn’t been there when they pulled Joshua from the asylum. But Wonwoo had been. And he was increasingly fearful that the message had everything to do with him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n As the tags say, I am reserving my right to drop one well-earned f-bomb before the end of this story so please anticipate (haha.) Thank you, thank you, thank you all. References in this chapter are to Witch at the Well ch. 2 + 6? (with some Marbles stuff, too).


	3. The Chalk Line

The thought of how the demon had found them no longer mattered to Wonwoo. The fear of why tumbled his thoughts into chaos as he floated down the stairs and through the empty house. If there was only one thing that he was fairly certain of, it was that the threat was no longer there. The question then became where he’d gone.

Wonwoo was not prepared for the undeniable press of something made of flesh and bone under his shoe. He sprung back, expecting to see a rat scurrying across the floor. He’d stepped on rat tails enough to know that disconcerting press of bone. 

The hallway was empty. His ears strained to hear the tap of nails on the hardwood floor. Instead the buzz in the air sharpened—and beyond that was something else. 

“Woozi?” he wondered uncertainly. He took a cautious step. There was no response but he was certain he could hear the sound of breathing. “Woozi, if that’s you. . .” He trailed off. _He had stepped on something._

The terrible rolling in his stomach became stronger as he crouched down to sweep his hand above the floorboards. When his eyes connected with the runner, he wondered with cautious relief if the bunched-up corner was all he had stepped on: not a foot, not a hand. He reached to roll it back down and paused to stare at the white line on the floor poking out from underneath the rug. 

He smudged at the line, and when he brought his fingers back and rolled them together, he realized it was chalk. The world hollowed out and the buzz in his ears grew high pitched and overwhelming.

He pushed the rug back another few inches. The line continued, beginning to form a pattern.

The man who had come into their home would have anticipated Woozi being there. He would have wanted revenge for what happened in London. He would have known how to hurt him. 

He started grabbing at the air above the rug until he collided with something solid. He fumbled to orient himself. Although he was working blind, he felt what seemed to be the edge of a sleeve and followed it to a cold hand.

Heart pounding, he squeezed the invisible hand under his own harder than he probably should have. “Woozi.” The fae’s hand was limp. The terrible thought drummed in the back of his head: _you stepped on his hand and he didn’t move._

He saw the edge of the chalk line and smudged it out completely, grinding dirt and chalk dust into his palm. With the trap broken, he looked back at the empty space where he knew Woozi was lying.

He moved clumsily until he found Woozi’s shoulder and shook. “Come on, Woozi,” he hissed nervously. “For God’s sake, Woozi, it's me—”

Woozi appeared all at once, crumpled and battered, the labored sound of breathing issuing past the blood in his mouth.

A series of curses spilled out of Wonwoo. Woozi was conscious, if only barely. His pupils roamed back and forth under half closed eyes. “It’s me,” Wonwoo repeated, placing his hand on Woozi’s forehead and using his thumbs to lift his eyelids so he could check them under the light. “Coups and I are home. We’re going to fix this.”

Woozi grabbed him by the front of his shirt. Though he was out of focus, he mumbled something.

Wonwoo leant down to put his ear by Woozi’s mouth.

The words left Woozi faint and slurred, “ _th’ bastard. ._.”

“I know,” Wonwoo said, patting Woozi’s chest to convince him to lie down flat again. “It was the doctor from St. Marks.”

Woozi’s head flopped to the side. He spat out blood and it slid down the side of his face. “‘eres ‘gyu.” He barely shaped the sounds into words. 

Wonwoo had already set to work to repair any of the damage he could with what he had in his pockets. “I don’t know, we only found Joshua.”

Woozi tried to lean up again and Wonwoo pushed him back down. He was moving like he didn’t understand the extent to which he'd been harried: or like he didn’t care. The curse of his immortality was the gift the fae had given him: to be entirely human and entirely not. The mending would be hard enough.

“You’re going to hurt yourself.”

Woozi's chest heaved like his body wanted to expel all of his breath, but the reaction was apparently to the irony of Wonwoo’s words: what further damage could he do? _“Wonwoo—”_

“I thought you might actually be dead," Wonwoo responded, masterfully covering the shake in his voice as he ripped a strip from his sleeve. He avoided looking at Woozi as he spoke. “So, I don’t want to hear it right now. It can wait.”

“Woo—”

“What?” he snapped, “What is so important?”

“’was ‘gyu.” Woozi’s breath wheezed in his chest, and it gave plenty of time for the half-spoken words to complete themselves in Wonwoo’s mind. 

He felt a rise of panic but hoped he’d heard wrong. “Mingyu did this?”

Woozi, his efforts understood, wilted back, and was still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n In which Wonwoo gets the answers to some of his questions, uses the capital G god word for once,  
> and Woozi is both lucky and unlucky to be part of the fae.


	4. The Mingyu Who Wasn't

Woozi heard Jeonghan call his name and opened himself up to it with a grumble of discontent. _What?_

Jeonghan’s response was brief. _Check on the kids, will you?_

Woozi scrunched up his face as if Jeonghan could see him. _Why?_ But Jeonghan had hung up the connection and the question thudded useless in his own thoughts. “Seriously, Jeonghan,” he complained, knowing it was futile.

He sighed and left the plate on the table. If Jeonghan was deputizing him, it was probably because no one else was home yet. He was reminded as he crossed from the kitchen to the living room that the house was quieter than it had been in a long time.

When the usual haunts turned up empty, he concluded that he would find them both in Jun’s room. Something about the way the sun hit that side of the house had apparently agreed with The8, who thought it was perfectly acceptable to take over any open room as he pleased. And if Mingyu was still smarting from yesterday’s revelation about his parentage, he would find The8. The two were always somewhere between harmless bickering and utter discord. Mingyu would find that a welcome contrast to the sympathy he could expect from the others.

Woozi could understand his struggle better than most, even if Mingyu was only just confronting the demons in his bloodline. He decided that this was why Jeonghan was sending him to check in instead of doing it himself, and there was zero merit to the doubt he buried under his thoughts. He was sure that Mingyu and The8 would be annoyed if they knew everyone still called them "the kids," but the habit was hard to break.

When he arrived at Jun’s door, there were no signs of life beyond a magazine abandoned on the floor. He stepped into the room briefly to pick it up and put it back on the mattress, and was about to step out again, until he saw the arm stretched out on the floor past the far side of the bed.

He froze for a moment, not sure what to make of it. The8 never slept in a normal place. The light coming in through the window would have been inviting enough. In the end, he took a step around the foot of the bed just to reassure himself, trying to be quiet until he saw the blood. “Shit.”

He crossed the room and rolled The8 off of his face. The younger was already coming to when Woozi shook his shoulder to rouse him, not wanting to go anywhere near the ugly head-wound that had bled down his face and onto the floor. “Are you okay?”

“Ow.” The8’s palms rose to press at his eyes and he moved vaguely to sit up. 

Before he could fall backward again, Woozi grabbed his arms to keep him upright. “What the hell happened?”

The8 suddenly tried to stand, singularly determined in his confusion. “I’m gonna kill him.”

“Who?”

The8 dropped his hands to steady himself, one hitting the windowsill before he plopped back onto the floor in defeat. “The big idiot who tried to kill me,” he complained. His face was set in a permanent wince and the blood was continuing to leak from the wound under his hairline, but he found Woozi in his spotty focus and his voice fell to unfamiliar concern, “It’s Mingyu. Something’s wrong with him. He’s not himself.”

Woozi’s mouth went dry. He looked at the red lines that The8’s hand had left on the white paint of the windowsill and thought of Mingyu’s open window from the night before. He had told him to shut it. Hadn’t he? Yet, Woozi had only said something out of habit. He hadn’t been worried about letting anything in. Not after so many years.

“Okay,” he said, already deciding to imagine the worst. “Let’s go.”

The8 mumbled irritably about a bat as he once more challenged getting to his feet. Woozi helped this time, but stayed dead focused on the doorway into the hall. They both froze when there was a loud thud from the floor above.

It suddenly occurred to Woozi that Jeonghan had asked him to check on the kids as if he’d had other concerns. 

Woozi wasn’t going to risk it. He changed direction and shepherded The8 toward the window. “Come on.” The house was no longer safe. The8 watched him with borderline disbelief, staring to object.

Woozi didn’t have the time to explain all the history he didn’t know. “Listen, you’re about to swan dive into the floor, so unless you plan to turn back into a dragon or whatever, you’re useless here. Trust me and go. Please.”

The8 would probably have argued if he wasn’t concussed. Instead, he let Woozi push him to the window and help him step through it. There wasn’t much of a drop, but The8 still buckled into the garden, dizzy and off balance. 

Woozi couldn’t wait around to see if he made it back to his feet. He pressed himself invisible to head toward the muffled sounds from the second floor.

. . .

Jeonghan had reached the top of the stairs. He still had his hand on the railing when he saw the figure with his back turned to him at the end of the hall. He reached out with his thoughts but received nothing in return. He continued forward a few steps until the figure turned toward him.

“You’re not Mingyu.” 

The Mingyu-who-wasn’t sized him up. He didn’t seem bothered by the declaration. Instead, he made one of his own. “You and I haven’t met before.”

Jeonghan became aware of the fact that Joshua’s room was behind him, and he paced toward the center of the hallway. All the while, he tried to press at the border of the other’s mind, trying to figure out what was behind the silence and the level gaze. The edge of some ancient darkness clung to him.

“You must be the master of the house, then.” It was Mingyu’s voice, but the way it twisted and rose was unfamiliar.

“I wouldn’t use the term,” Jeonghan rebuffed, feeling the set of his shoulders as he took up his defensive position between Mingyu and the rest of the house.

The being that moved as Mingyu continued conversationally, “I can’t seem to reach all of my power in here. I know that the witch has this place coated in so many wards and protections that it took me, frankly, ages to get in in the first place—but that’s not why I had to resort to punching Joshua to snap the grace out of him. Luckily, Mingyu’s had some practice stopping him or things could have gotten messy.”

Jeonghan’s jaw set into wild anger. He controlled it, wrestling it into his center so he wouldn’t make a mistake. He refused to even blink as the figure that was and was not Mingyu took another step forward, pushing up his sleeves.

“So, what I’m thinking, is that someone around here is protecting this place, and if it wasn’t for them, I could go about my business.”

Jeonghan felt the shove of some other power seeking access to his thoughts and he hurled it back with enough force that Mingyu stumbled back a step.

This seemed to surprise and delight the darkness that had taken Mingyu over. “Oh, that’s interesting,” he said, tapping at his temple as if referencing a lock-box of memories, “He didn’t know you could do that.”

“You should leave now,” Jeonghan said. 

“Do you know me, yet?”

And Jeonghan did. He hadn’t gone to St. Marks with the rest of them or met the demon there, but he had walked through the wreckage he left in his wake enough nights to hate him. And he would unravel him if he hurt anyone in his house again, or if he tried to keep hold of Mingyu.

“I have no quarrel with you,” the demon said with all the marks of honesty. “And I can go about my business with or without your approval, but it would be easier if I didn’t have to bludgeon my way around like an animal.”

“You aren’t welcome here,” Jeonghan asserted, “I’m giving you a chance to go.”

“To go?” The demon grinned disturbingly with Mingyu’s face. “Me and Mingyu are just having a family reunion, and I wanted to catch up with the rest of the gang before I went on my way.”

It seemed almost too great a coincidence that the demon had reappeared with so many of them away from the house, but Jeonghan was thankful for it. He tried to make a warning to Woozi but the second he pulled his focus away he felt the shove of the demon’s diminished powers and had to bring his foot back to catch himself.

“I’ve held this house against far greater things than you,” Jeonghan threatened as he reset himself, holding his hands up to sustain the barrier he formed in the hall.

“I’m feeling pretty refreshed,” the demon teased, “I’d be willing to take the bet.”

Jeonghan squared himself, rage bubbling over because he knew that the demon had sought out Joshua first. That he’d planned this. He wondered how long it had taken him to get inside of Mingyu’s head and how he could have missed it.

The darkness as Mingyu pushed a step forward, studying him closely. “I don’t think you’ll do it,” he said with keen perceptiveness, “I think you may be more than you say you are, but you wouldn’t hurt poor old Mingyu, would you? Anything you do against me, you do to him. You know this. You’ve lived long enough to know a great many things.”

Jeonghan felt the delicate balance as he fought to hold Mingyu in place without sending him flying. He slid his foot backward to give himself more leverage. 

“Let’s see how good you really are,” the demon suggested. And the hallway rippled into chaos.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n Woozi over-thinks, Jeonghan holds back, and the bat from WatW ch. 6 has a cameo.


	5. Reflections

The faucet gushed loudly and then clunked to a stop before Joshua returned to attacking the edges of the wound. His shirt was damp at the collar and where he leant so far toward the mirror that the countertop pressed into his stomach. While he dragged the towel roughly over the cuts that ran down his neck, S. Coups stood to the side of the sink, nearly biting through his lip when he scraped painfully over one of the marks. His hands moved automatically to intercede. “Here, let me—"

“No.” The word snapped with the brief energy of a flashbulb, but Joshua’s sudden tension lingered with the sizzle of magnesium and smoke.

S. Coups let his arms sank back to his sides, making every attempt to have no reaction at all, which only made his wounded feelings more transparent alongside his concern.

Joshua made a conscious effort to relax his shoulders and his tone: “I’ve got it.”

He ran the faucet again, watching the red-tinged water swirl before meeting his reflection in the mirror. The cuts looked angrier now, the lines clearer without the stain of blood. He brought the damp towel up to press against them, hiding them from sight, and caught S. Coups’s expression through the mirror. He felt both guilty and exposed.

“I could have stopped him," he said to the look on his face, "He caught me off guard.”

“I know you could have.”

S. Coups didn’t sound like he was patronizing him, but Joshua was not sure if his own insistence had sounded naïve. He’d convinced himself things would be different—that he was stronger and better prepared—and he’d gotten sucker punched. “You checked the attic?” he asked to change the subject.

S. Coups nodded. “Nothing.”

Joshua wished that he would say something more to fill the empty space, while also being grateful that he didn’t. He knew he was looking for a way to be angry. Anything would be better than the cluster of anxiety and shame that hung inside of him like a wasp’s nest, volatile and paper-thin. He turned to lean his back against the sink.

“You don’t have to stay here,” he expressed awkwardly, “You can go. . . help Wonwoo or. . .”

S. Coups was unwavering. “I know.”

And Joshua wanted to explain the dread of knowing that even the most powerful part of himself was useless against the doctor that had once pretended to treat him knowing what he was. That he could thumb through pages and pages of his memories and come up with blanks where the demon should be. And the only part of him that knew anything about it was the part of him he couldn’t reach.

“If Mingyu is possessed, are we going to be able to get him back?” Joshua asked to interrupt his own thoughts, wishing for a whisper of voices now to drown out his own.

“I hope so.”

S. Coups’s simple honesty was beyond reproach, and if he kept watching with his expression so open and attentive, Joshua would end up telling him everything. That no, he didn’t remember a lot of St. Marks, but he would sometimes get just the idea of a thing, like an image, or a sound, or a jolt of old pain. Pieces of conversations where the demon sounded so convincing. _You need help, Joshua. None of what you’re saying is real._

“There’s something I’m supposed to remember,” he said to S. Coups then, because they were trying not to have secrets. “And I can’t. And it makes me want to scream.”

“What kind of thing?” S. Coups asked understandingly, reaching behind himself to find the edge of the bathtub so he could sit against it. He never once broke his gaze away as he moved.

Joshua cast his eyes along the loops in the radiator to avoid him. The rust showed through where the paint had chipped away. “I think I did something I wasn’t supposed to do. Maybe it’s the reason I was at the asylum in the first place. Something he wanted me to forget. He messed with my head so much that I—” Joshua gave up, too tired to think it over. He was chilled and he was exhausted and his eyelids felt heavy. The light was too bright in the tiled room. “I need to talk to it.”

“To what?”

Joshua shot him a look in lieu of an answer. And S. Coups understood, but he could no more talk to the wolf than Joshua could talk to the angel. They were separate sides of themselves.

“How would you do it?” S. Coups wondered.

“I don’t know,” Joshua sighed in defeat, closing his eyes and dropping the towel away from his neck. He twisted its dampness in his hands as he added, “I’m just really tired.” The tiredness extended beyond everything, old and ever present—like the radiator left disconnected rather than ripping its bolts from the floor.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t home.”

Joshua blinked himself into a double take, because he had not realized until then that part of S. Coups’s reason for being there with him was guilt. He saw it now in the way he had crossed his arms and bounced his leg so that his whole frame shook.

“You couldn’t have stopped it,” Joshua told him. And even though he’d meant it to sound reassuring, he got the sense that S. Coups was wounded at the idea that he was right.

Joshua turned away to drop the towel over the edge of the sink. The coolness of the porcelain pressed into his palms, and when he caught his reflection this time through the streaks in the mirror—the toothpaste splatters like careless fingerprints of ordinary days—he knew he was done letting the angel protect him. He deserted the sink and the bathroom. He could hear S. Coups following after, asking what was wrong. Only once he reentered his room, back to where it all started, did he finally turn to face him.

“Hit me.”

“What?” S. Coups’s startled reaction was thrown around the room like he wanted to share his disbelief with someone who wasn’t there. “I’m not going to hit you.”

“If you hit me the other me will show up.”

S. Coups turned Joshua so that when he pressed on his shoulders he sat on the bed. “Just slow down for a second,” he begged, and the distress was clear on his face. “Don’t you think that there might be another way of doing this?”

Joshua scrunched his eyebrows a little to consider the idea. If he had enough adrenaline, he could sometimes pull it up himself. “I could try to wrestle with it, I guess.”

S. Coups looked like he was going to crawl out of his own skin in his effort to explain: “I mean that this is part of you and you’re trying to fight it.” The words settled for a long time. More than once S. Coups’s eyes flicked to the marks on Joshua’s face and neck before he continued, "I feel like you’re trying to beat yourself up over this. But maybe you shouldn't take cues on how to treat yourself from an actual demon."

It occurred to him, then, that this other side of himself had been the real target of the demon from St. Marks. Of course, he’d known that, but if the asylum had messed him up, what could he expect from the part of him that remembered? He couldn’t be mad that it failed to stop the demon who had spent untold years learning about it. For whatever purpose.

S. Coups had shrugged broadly, and the sound of his hands hitting back at his sides brought Joshua into focus in time to hear him say, “Maybe you just need to ask it for help.”

The idea was novel, but Joshua liked it enough. How many times had that part of him tried to answer other people’s prayers? “Alright,” he agreed, slipping off the edge of the bed to sit on the floor. The bar along the bottom of the bed-frame dug into his spine and he sat up taller to avoid it, bringing his legs in under himself until he was as comfortable as he was going to get. He closed his eyes only to open them back up and joke, “I feel like Jeonghan would approve of this.”

S. Coups breathed into a smile, but then both of them felt the absence more acutely. There were only four of them in the house now, and unless Joshua got his answers or Woozi recovered, they would have no clue where to even begin. And the demon was still out there.

“Good luck,” S. Coups said, for lack of anything else to say.

Joshua nodded, but before he closed his eyes again, he asked, “Keep watch?”

And S. Coups knew that the last thing Joshua probably wanted to do right now was close his eyes in the room where he’d been ambushed by his oldest fear. “I will,” he assured. 

Joshua shook out his shoulders and closed his eyes, exhaling until his hands uncurled out of fists. 

S. Coups stood there for a minute, an ache in the well of infinite fondness that he drew from even now. And once he was sure that Joshua seemed okay, he stepped out toward the hall to keep watch as he’d promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Took a bit to get this one right. Next chapter is waiting in the wings and then things get going. Thank you for the patience and kind words and predictions and observations. <3
> 
> In which we get some metaphors while S. Coups and Joshua fail to fully recognize their parallels.
> 
> Also, 10 points for treating yourself kinder than actual demons.
> 
> All the best -K


	6. The Church Door

The church door opened, and he barely caught The8 as he fell against him.

Jun’s arms hooked under the younger’s automatically, breath exhaling in a huff of surprise, and past the confusion of the priest’s alarmed shout behind him, he caught the metallic scent of blood along the roof of his mouth.

He dropped down, unable to maintain his awkward hold on The8’s dead weight. The entire right side of the younger’s face was painted with blood and dipped toward him as the weight of his head lolled heavily. The smell dragged at him and drew him out of his senses into a trance only broken by the priest thumping at his shoulder. He shot a glance to assure he was okay and only then registered that The8 had a flimsy hold of his jacket, muttering incoherently.

He reacted on sudden instinct, patting at the side of the younger’s face that wasn’t coated in blood. “Hey, Minghao, can you look at me?” A prickle of cold sweat had risen at the back of Jun’s neck even as he denied the way his pulse ran wild. He blamed it on worry alone, which spun circles in his thoughts. Over his shoulder, he could feel the priest like a shadow, wringing his hands enough to be heard past the muddle of heartbeats colliding in Jun’s ears.

The distraction clouded him as he tried to listen to what The8 was slurring in pauses and hums that were clumsy and out of character. The shock of his presence at the church, so many miles off the beaten path, almost raised more questions than the state of him. Suddenly, Jun caught a syllable he recognized. He latched onto it, repeating back uncertainly: “Louse?”

Jun could have sworn that The8 rolled his eyes at him, though he was barely able to keep upright where they knelt in the dirt. Yet, somewhere in his annoyance, he found the determination to pull himself together on two words: _“The house.”_

Fighting the quickening pulse in his throat, he glanced past The8 down the empty road. The tunnel of trees was already turning with the season toward an ominous red. A new awe and horror crept in as he realized what should have been obvious. “You came here from home?”

The8’s head suddenly dropped past his shoulder and he had to physically stop him from hitting the ground. He reached blindly for the priest behind him, grabbing his leg. “Help me.”

Between the two of them, they managed to drag the younger up and carry him into the building. As Jun lowered him carefully onto one of the benches, the priest offered a stack of missals to put under his head and said with mousy energy: “I’ll go get some aid.”

The priest hurried off, and Jun was left wishing for a moment that instead he had the steady council of another parish leader who had passed on like so many ordinary men. The smallness of St. Raphael nestled in its solitude felt shabby and inadequate in comparison. The black veins of old varnish ran along the pews beside strips of tan where the wood had been scraped bare by use and time. 

Jun sat on the kneeler so that he was level with the bench. It was hard for him to concentrate past the instinct of blood, but he squeezed The8’s wrist where it hung down by his too pale face and hoped he might get him to open his eyes. “What about the house?” he wondered uselessly. The wound was hidden in The8’s hair, but Jun could tell it was bad, made worse by the distance he would have had to travel on foot to make it here from home. If The8 had dragged himself over so many miles, then something must have been terribly wrong.

He almost called ‘Hoshi’ toward the rafters, feeling foolish as he realized it would be pointless on hallowed ground. Even then, he knew Hoshi hardly ever came when he was called. 

More than that, he felt a great emptiness, which made any attempt at reaching out feel like a terrible omen. They would have rung the church if they needed him. They wouldn't have sent for him like this. Unless they hadn’t had another way. Unless there hadn’t been a choice. 

The priest appeared again, his steps quick on the stone floor. Jun finished thinking it through and made a decision.

“Look after him.”

The priest seemed startled by the order, but Jun was already on his feet.

“Where are you going?” the man asked.

Jun only paused to drop his hand on The8’s ankle for a moment in acknowledgment. “Home,” he said, before he took off out of the door. 

He rounded the corner of the old white church to grab the bike leaning against its graying foundation: the bike he’d taken every Saturday for a dozen or more years now down the quiet back-roads to St. Raphael’s parish. The road that The8 had stained with blood to send for him.

. . .

He dumped the bike at the yew tree where the road turned to dirt, only slowing when he came into the yard and spotted the figure sitting on the front porch steps, whistling as he whittled in blasé nonchalance.

“Mingyu?”

They responded without looking, shaving the end of a stick into a point in a way that was decidedly threatening. “Wrong.” And it was not Mingyu, though he was wearing his face.

“Who are you?”

The answer lilted out of the other slowly, “ _Beware the Jabberwock, my son,_ ” he flashed a wicked smile. “ _The jaws that bite, the claws that catch.”_

The poem crept with extraordinary menace into the hollow of his chest. Jun remembered London vividly. He knew what had come to call. He looked over to the open doorway, trying to decide if he could make it past him into the house.

“Too late,” the demon said, smiling with Mingyu’s teeth in a way that didn’t reach his eyes. He sang lightly, “ _One, two, one two, and through and through_ _._ ”

Jun recognized the mocking line from the poem. It was the one Joshua had repeated that first day at the asylum and it made him cold. But he wondered, too, if just for a moment, there had been an apology reaching from behind the black eyes, a plea coming from Mingyu and not the demon that possessed him. And he thought it odd.

“What do you want,” Jun asked, trying to bury the awful feeling that he might be the only one left standing.

The demon’s gesturing was painfully close to Mingyu’s own when he pointed to the open door, “Did you want to take the tour?” 

Jun didn’t answer, and the demon continued whittling. “I was a little disappointed to find that half the gang wasn’t home, but even then, I wouldn’t have thought it could be so easy. The five of you put up such a fuss back then.”

The open doorway was a taunt which made Jun fidget at the fear that the people he loved could be hurt or worse, and he was on the wrong side of the distance that he’d measured his life from. He had no way of knowing who had stayed or gone after he’d left that morning. He was affronted by thoughts of empty eyes and twisted violence. Immortality was a catch all term. He knew that better than anyone.

“I’m glad that you made it home in time to see what you’ve wrought,” the demon said perceptively, studying him with relaxed awareness. He leant his elbow back on the step above him and the stair creaked in the shift of his weight. “It's been more than a century since you brought the gang to St. Marks, and it's still shocking to me that you would choose to put them all in danger rather than bend your own morality. Not that you knew what I was. But fate sure has a funny way, doesn’t it?” The demon watched down his eyes in a way that Mingyu never would. There was no touch of the sincerity that usually brushed Mingyu's face when the demon continued, “To think: You call your friends to London, the witch brings his new apprentice, and that apprentice just happens to be my son.”

Jun blanched at the declaration. He hadn’t known he’d led Mingyu to the one responsible for his immortality. The demon from St. Marks caught on to his surprise, saying,

“Don’t worry, Mingyu only found out yesterday. Seems there’s no honesty among thieves. You taking Joshua away without a fair deal was wrong of you, but at least I can see where you get it from. Seems the whole gang has a habit of collecting wayward folk. And now there are,” he made a show of counting on his fingers, “11 of you.” He paused, then added with special amusement, “10, I suppose.”

Jun wondered who he had forgotten. He had almost corrected the number, but then he blacked out his thoughts. He didn’t want his memories betraying what he knew.

He was lucky enough, because the demon was far too busy talking to notice, “I would have liked to take a crack at that team mascot of yours, though. And the witch. But that’s what you’re for, I suppose.”

Jun didn’t have to worry over what that meant. He nodded toward the stick the other had sharpened into a stake. “That’s a myth. Won’t work on me.”

The demon laughed and stood, carrying Mingyu’s height with menace so that he seemed even taller. He came across and dropped his arm heavily around Jun’s shoulders with casual acquaintance that made him cringe. “Of course,” he hummed, in response to Jun’s comment, “but I’m a fan of irony.”

And Jun understood that immortality was a fickle thing, but a stab to the heart was a stab to the heart. The lines from the poem played in his head. _One, two, one, two . ._

The demon spoke close by his ear. “Let’s go for a walk, shall we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a/n Things get tense as we get our last look into the past. Lots and lots of hints and questions as Jun reminds us that immortality in our stories is not always a guarantee.  
> (Also, the demon counted wrong. Didn't he?)
> 
> *Sidenote for clarity, Mingyu is the son of the demon from St. Marks. It's what made him so accessible to possession and also seems to be part of the reason the demon took the trouble to track them down, though the pieces of why are still coming together.
> 
> Next update might be a double update. (Also I got a new job so ahhhhhhhhhh. At least I have all the drafts for this story done, haha). Thank you all. - K


	7. Time

Standing sentry in the doorway, S. Coups found that his body had never really forgotten the soldier’s carriage it had memorized long ago. 

His heels almost brushed the doorframe which he had lined up to without a thought, spine straight like he was measuring himself against it. He wondered with self-awareness if he should leave a notch in the wood. Instead, he let his focus linger on the scratches in the metal plate of the door latch. The place where the latch had scraped over in repetitive use was lighter than the rest of the bronze.

One hand played with the fabric over his heart as he thought about the way that most scars turned white.

He checked back at Joshua, who had taken on the faintest glow in the darkened room. His bangs fell just at his nose bridge, obscuring his eyes, but even then, the mark on his face was visible. It left an impression less severe than the words. He seemed at a strange peace, and whether he had succeeded in his task or not, S. Coups recognized the feeling of calm after chaos.

With the shade drawn and the sun gone to the other side of the house, it seemed darker than the hour would suggest. It was not long after five. There was no clock to confirm his estimate, but he kept time with obsessive certainty. Even before the centuries old attack that had turned his life into cycles of violence, he had set himself with military precision. As he’d laid on the verge of dying in the woods in the dark, he had counted down seconds. And in his mission to control time, time had wound up controlling him.

He went through the roll call in his head of who was present or missing or otherwise. He could mark that Hoshi was safe, wherever he was. And they had Woozi back, even if Wonwoo hadn’t sounded confident about the track of his recovery. Of the absences, The8 worried him. He’d had nothing to do with the haunting that followed them a century from London—

A sudden dimming of the light in the hall broke him from his thoughts. A glance at Joshua did little to confirm or deny a connection to the strangeness. He had not moved since first closing his eyes. All seemed well.

He stepped into the hallway briefly. Without the usual commotion, he could hear the ceiling light buzz with sudden intensity through the frosted glass. The bulb was flickering toward a burn out. He exhaled through his nose. He would need to replace it when all of this was over. 

At the thought of the trouble ending, he imagined what it would look like. There would have be a way to get Mingyu back. From what he knew, the doctor from St. Marks had been easy to outsmart in London. They could do it again. He was almost reassured by the idea that no one else was home. There might already have been a plan. Something in the works that he and Wonwoo had missed.

A drop of water splashed suddenly onto his forehead. He wrinkled his nose in surprise, brushing the drop away as he looked up at the ceiling. There was no sign of water, no darkening stain to suggest a burst pipe or a leak. When he looked at his hand, his fingers were dry.

In his scan of the space around him, he looked closer at the floor and realized that there was a trail of silver, as if someone had walked down the hall dripping water as they went.

At the end of the hallway was an old storage closet. It had once held the furnace, but they’d replaced it almost thirty years ago or more. Now it was stuffed full of old coats and boxes. There had been no reason to check there. 

He spared a final glance back at Joshua before he followed the trail, rolling one foot in front of the other. Each spot seemed to span the length between his strides, leading him forward. 

The buzzing rose in his ears, the tension heavy in the air.

The ceiling light had slowly dimmed to its usual degree. It sharpened the shadows that outlined the edges of the door as he reached toward the handle.

. . .

“Wonwoo!”

The tone of S. Coups’s voice was terrifying.

Wonwoo scrambled to stuff the leftover supplies back into his coat pockets as he left Woozi on the couch.

He took the stairs two at a time and found S. Coups at the closet at the end of the hall. He was crouched down, repeating, “He’s not dead,” over and over like it was half a question and half a spell to make it true. “He’s not, right?”

Wonwoo put a hand on his shoulder so he could lean forward enough to see what was going on. It was immediately clear why S. Coups would need to ask.

Jeonghan was slumped on the floor of the closet, propped against the wall amongst the boxes where he’s either fallen or been thrown. His blood was a dark blue stain in the shadows. S. Coups had a scarf pulled from the rod of old clothes above them pressed around the spot where the old furnace pipe had gone through Jeonghan’s side.

He had to step over S. Coups to get close enough. The pipe bent away from the wall, a relic of a bygone renovation to replace the whole heating system.

“Why is he like that?” S. Coups questioned unsteadily. “He’s immortal, Wonwoo, he can’t be dead.”

It didn’t take long for Wonwoo to look things over. Part of him already knew. He switched automatically into triage mode. “The pipe’s iron,” he said, and for a moment he thought of long ago in France when blue-bloods had been tossed around as a joke.

S. Coups fell off of his heels, expression dazed by understanding.

“He’s alive, Seungcheol. Okay?”

He nodded, hyper-fixated on what Wonwoo was saying to the point where he almost didn’t seem to be hearing him. Wonwoo tried to remember whose decision it had been to leave the disconnected pipes bolted along the wall, but he couldn’t even remember what decade they had done the work. The old coats and suitcases piled into the closet afterward hadn’t been in any danger from them. Perhaps Jeonghan had pestered them once to finish the job, but there had always been another day. They’d nearly wrecked the place in their stubbornness to do the job themselves. 

S. Coups helped him do the gruesome work of moving Jeonghan free to the floor. In any other circumstance, Jeonghan would have been lucky. The metal had gone clean through, missed anything important, the gash was barely a thumbs-length wide. It was nothing that could put him out of commission. Except that they’d had to replace the whole heating system—to build the boiler-room off the back of the house to host the new furnace—because the iron leeching into the water had started to burn Jeonghan’s hands.

Wonwoo dumped his pockets of everything except the switchblade. The assortment of bottles and flowers and bandages had become chaotic with the revolving door of crises he’d had to compensate for. He snatched up the tincture of azaleas before it rolled out of reach.

S. Coups watched him sorting through the medicines spilled on the floor. He was crouched like a runner, his hand over Jeonghan’s hand. “I can go get Joshua,” he said suddenly, almost getting to his feet.

“It won’t work,” Wonwoo said, scrabbling for the sap he’d stripped from the jewelweed last season. Jeonghan was gray. He hadn’t been able to tell until he’d seen the contrast between their hands. But the wound wasn’t the problem. It wasn’t even staining his clothes anymore. 

“Why not?”

Wonwoo ignored him. Azaleas craved iron. He could maybe create a charcoal effect if he— Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dino before he heard him.

“Wonwoo.”

“I just need a minute.”

“Wonwoo.”

“I just need a little more time, Dino, okay?” He heard the dread in his own tone as things kept dropping from his hands. Jeonghan had always laughed at the concept of time.

S. Coups caught on to Dino being there. As always, it took a few moments for the recognition to settle. When it did, he grabbed Wonwoo’s shoulder in a vice-like grip. “You can fix him.”

The separate pull of life and death had his heart crashing in his chest. He felt the things beyond understanding as the vision of all his magic blurred. 

“I can’t.” He realized it as he said it. “I can’t fix it.”

S. Coups alternated his focus from Wonwoo to Dino, waiting for one of them to move or say or do something that would change the meaning. But S. Coups knew what Dino was. And Jeonghan was not the stone gray that he’d been at the apple tree. He was waxen and lifeless.

“No,” S. Coups insisted, shaking his head. “He’s immortal.” He talked with a controlled voice like he could speak it into existence. “He’s older than any of us."

Wonwoo wouldn’t stop looking at him, and S. Coups refused to see it even as his voice caught. “You remember, Wonwoo. He’s so clever. And he wouldn’t let—nothing could just walk in here and . . .”

Wonwoo sat in crushing silence, because S. Coups was figuring it out on his own in the most difficult way: that Jeonghan, who had crossed paths with them in 17th century cities that no longer existed, wry with arching wit and unexpected kindness and sudden wisdom in all the infinite years afterward, was the reason that Dino had come to call.

Still he denied it. He grabbed the bottle that had slipped over Wonwoo’s fingers to the floor and tried to shove it back into his hands, wrapped in the willful stubbornness of logic: as if he could out-smart death. “He’s not like the rest of us. And you know he’s always got a plan, Wonwoo. You can’t give up on him.”

Wonwoo felt Dino standing behind them like a shadow and he couldn’t keep the moisture from pricking at his eyes. There were so many things he couldn’t do.

“He wouldn’t let any of us get hurt!” 

The swing toward sudden anger made Wonwoo shrink, though every part of him was pinned down by an unbearable weight of grief. Curling up his fingers, he caught the edge of S. Coups’s hand still pressed over his own. S. Coups’s final insistence had rung like a church bell, until it wobbled into new meaning.

He barely managed to lift his voice past the catch in his throat. “Exactly, Coups.”

S. Coups finally let his eyes settle back onto Jeonghan. “He wouldn’t—” The words broke him apart. His breath hitched and he pulled his hand free from Wonwoo’s touch. The repetition of his own words became a devastated realization as his denial failed him: “ _He wouldn’t let them get hurt_.” And it was the one truth about Jeonghan that could make him see it: that if Jeonghan had been able, if he’d had any way of stopping this, that he would have. Jeonghan would have given everything for this place and its people he was always fixing. For the home he’d gone ahead to find for them.

“I’m so sorry,” Dino said. And even though he walked in death, he meant it.

Wonwoo closed his eyes against the devastated sound of S. Coups sobbing.

In a notebook somewhere at his bedside was the story of how death had met them once before. A story that Dino’s presence refreshed in remembrance of a dark night: the terrible humor of time to matter only in seconds when they had an infinite amount of it.

He pushed himself backward, surrounded by all of the potions and magic that were useless now.

This was where all of their borrowed time had led them.

There in a hallway in Scotland, so far from where it had all begun, he felt the echo reaching him like a swirl of candle smoke. With S. Coups, who had fought battles in ancient woods, now breaking open, and Jeonghan, who two centuries ago had chosen a house that was far too big in all his wisdom. A house that always needed fixing. A house that was empty and hollow without him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N I'm sending this one out into the ether before I have to go to bed. Please feel free to ask anything for the pieces missing or pieces yet to come. I combined the chapters so this is the double update. All my love and apologies. <3


	8. A Second Time

The world dimmed.

Seconds piled into infinity, and Wonwoo let himself fall into the space between his heartbeats and the ache that swallowed them whole. 

Jeonghan had always smiled like he had secrets. Except sometimes, when one of them would catch him off guard: then he’d laugh until his eyes went searching at the edge of helplessness to understand them—as if he still found them strange and miraculous.

They would forget that laugh one day. It was the way with immortality.

“Hey, Coups,” he called bleakly.

The other was folded to the floor. Although his shoulders still shook, it was quieter now, the only sound in the paused world.

He knew, then, what Alice must have felt tumbling down the rabbit hole, falling endlessly and inevitably from a world that made sense toward a world that didn’t.

In the scraps of memory flashing by, he caught the remembrance that Mingyu had helped. He’d helped them pull up floorboards and bust through walls. He would have known about the iron. But Wonwoo couldn’t accept that this had been intentional. Jeonghan had been as much a part of the universe as oxygen or space. It would take something that consequential to erase his thumbprint from the world.

And they had to keep moving.

Wonwoo found it in himself to push forward from the wall. He crawled the short distance over to put his hand on S. Coups’s back. “Hey.”

S. Coups shifted with a deep pull of control through his nose. When he finally sat back, he looked wrecked, dull and devastated in his curve forward. He glanced at Wonwoo briefly, face still blotchy from the outpouring of grief. 

“I don’t know how we do this without him,” he said: so honest that Wonwoo felt inadequate to respond. 

He knew what he meant, though. They’d been different before Jeonghan.

Wonwoo finally let himself look at him lying there. No trace remained of the light that had sheltered in him like dawn below the horizon.

As if caught in that same reflection, S. Coups had leant to put his hands on either side of Jeonghan’s face. Reality had etched the truth deeply by then, so the contrast of his every small motion: the indent of his thumb on dull skin, the slight tremble of the hair at his forehead where he leant forward over Jeonghan’s weighted stillness was a cruelty that no longer stung, just rung hollowly and endlessly.

There were dragging footsteps down the hall.

Wonwoo caught the moment S. Coups broke from his mourning. He swiped hastily at his face with his sleeve. “Josh—”

“I remembered.”

“Joshua, stop.”

S. Coups had gotten his feet under him. Wonwoo didn’t know how he’d found the strength to stand: how he could be there holding Joshua back.

They would have to do this over and over again, to share the awful news—but this would be the hardest. Wonwoo wished he felt whole enough to say something.

Joshua now stared through S. Coups who blocked his path forward but could not block the sight of Jeonghan’s body gray and lifeless on the floor.

The cuts down the side of Joshua’s neck still gave him a ghastly appearance, but it was the darkening bruise that felt somehow worse, curling around his temple and framing the strange light at his eye. For a moment he seemed pierced through, leaning against S. Coups’s hands that held both of his arms, and then he repeated:

“I remember.”

The distance in his voice sent a wrench through the hall.

Wonwoo shut his eyes.

The realization bloomed in S. Coups slowly. “Oh, Josh,” he uttered in faintest distress. There was a pause, like he had searched for anything like recognition in Joshua's far-off eyes. When he couldn’t find it, he sank slowly back to the floor.

Any other day, Wonwoo knew that S. Coups would have met Joshua’s distance with practiced understanding, but today it felt overwhelmingly cruel in a way that none of them deserved. Joshua did not seem aware of S. Coups’s hand still clinging to his sleeve like an anchor or of Jeonghan’s body laid out on the floor.

“What did you remember?” Wonwoo asked in the end, because he knew it was what Joshua wanted, even if it wasn't what S. Coups needed to hear. When Joshua got like this, he wouldn't quit the thought until he’d finished it.

“I remember what I did,” he answered, set on some spot beyond the wall.

Because he had to, Wonwoo prompted, "What did you do?"

Joshua looked down the line of his arm that linked him to S. Coups, and when he spoke, his every word was unflinching. “I brought a man back from the dead.”

There was silence. 

Joshua’s eyes stayed connected to S. Coups, and S. Coups connected back with the hand holding his arm. And for a long moment that was all that happened in the hallway suspended in time. Until Joshua spoke again. “You were too far from home,” he said to him. “It didn’t seem right.”

S. Coups’s face began to twist in wild realization.

And Wonwoo remembered Seungcheol telling of the wolves in the dark, the mauling that left him cursed at death's door, and he could feel the stillness of S. Coup’s shallow breath proving that he knew what Joshua meant and didn’t understand it.

He started shaking his head. “That’s not possible.”

Seconds seemed to fly backward out of infinity as Joshua crouched down. The way he met level with S. Coups’s eyes held an intensity beyond measure as he said like an echo, “You didn’t feel alone.”

The story was too big. It took up all the space in the hall and kept growing. And suddenly, Joshua’s distance didn’t seem so distant, like he had broken a piece from the far flung stars he wandered among and walked back to them with it clutched in his hands.

“Josh, we never met before St. Marks,” S. Coups insisted, his confusion fighting with the pain that had already built a home in his every gesture and expression. “I would have remembered you.”

“I was different, then” Joshua barely explained. Then he broke the link that connected him to S. Coups to level his focus at Wonwoo. “But I can do it again.”

And Wonwoo knew it would have been so easy not to believe him. To think that Joshua had let the day’s ordeal shape his thoughts into fancy: that he only wanted to believe it. But Joshua didn’t lie. And Wonwoo believed him.

Even as he sensed the shift in the air, S. Coups remained in opposition and confusion as if terrified to accept it. “How can you know?”

“I think Mingyu wanted me to know,” Joshua said steadily.

“That wasn’t Mingyu."

“He’s still there,” Joshua said with certainty, “I could hear him.” And as was sometimes the way with Joshua, the words were an afterthought of their meaning, a message shared on behalf of a grace within him that didn’t use language. 

“What does that mean?” S. Coups asked in deep desperation, because he seemed to know that he was speaking to both parts of Joshua: the Joshua of the now and the void.

There was no doubt or hesitation in Joshua’s voice when he answered, “It means I can fix this.”

“You know what will happen if you do,” Dino spoke up.

They all turned to find him still standing there, although they had forgotten.

His words set time back into motion, and S. Coups knelt upright to grab Joshua’s shoulder. “What does that mean?” When Joshua didn’t answer, he turned to the reaper who had come to call, his doubt swept aside by foreboding. “Tell me.”

Dino answered. “The same thing that happened last time.”

Wonwoo began to understand. There was not much written of angels, but there was always talk of the fall.

"What happened last time?” S. Coups asked, because he and Joshua hadn’t met until the cab ride away from St. Marks, centuries after the mauling by the wolf in the dark that had left him cursed but miraculously alive.

“I’ll start over,” Joshua explained with old wisdom, “I’ll forget but I’ll live.”

The hallway turned into shared silence at the weight of what he’d said.

“It’s the price death asks of everything,” Dino confirmed, “It’s a fair trade.”

And Wonwoo wondered if Dino fully understood the impact of his words. If he’d noticed.

“So you’ll forget all of us?” S. Coups asked with distress, pulling at Joshua with his eyes, “You’ll just forget and then what?”

“You’ll get to tell me all over again.” He turned to catch S. Coup’s eyes in his own and he was so present. He was so real and clear and they would lose that if he did what he was offering to do.

“I’m not making trades,” S. Coups insisted, “I’m not choosing—”

“No,” Joshua said poignantly, "you're not."

Wonwoo once more closed his eyes. He didn’t have the power to wrap his head around it—to consider or to argue against it—because Joshua was going to make the choice for himself. Maybe this was time: bound to catch up with all of them in some way. Maybe Joshua had saved S. Coups as he claimed, fallen out of time until they found him again not knowing who he was, and he would return the favor now in a bitter cycle: the snake swallowing its tail.

He didn't know if he really understood any of it. The conversation had continued in muddled tones beside him. The only thing he knew was that he couldn’t sit in the hallway being useless any longer. “I’m going to go,” he said, his voice barely disturbing the air as he searched for some excuse. “I left Woozi—”

“Is he alright?” S. Coups asked. His expression was reaching with profound concern, and Wonwoo thought, not for the first time, that Seungcheol was a little amazing for that.

“He will be,” Joshua assured.

Wonwoo was almost certain that Joshua knew that for sure. For a moment, he wanted to acknowledge him in some better way, but he couldn’t find the words.

“Thank you,” he told him instead.

And Joshua nodded his understanding with a presence that made the Earth, for a moment, seem to tilt on its axis. 

Wonwoo started to walk away, trying not to think of it as the last time, and he saw that Dino was still there a short ways off, his shoulder brushing the wall. He appeared to have moved back to give them a bit of space and distance, but he watched with a closeness that was almost affection from where he stood.

“To think,” Dino noted, so quiet that Wonwoo only heard him as he stepped in closer, “His entire world is falling apart and he thought to ask if Woozi was okay.” He had his arms crossed and he nodded at the back of S. Coups and Joshua sitting on the floor. They formed a wall around Jeonghan’s body in their huddled conversation, and Dino added, “People still find ways to surprise me.”

Wonwoo wondered how long it had taken Dino to see himself as separate from mankind. “Want to leave with me?” he offered.

“No,” Dino answered politely, “I’ll stay.” His eyes were touched with a smile, but it was sad, somehow, to the same degree that it was happy. He was still watching the trio on the floor. “Just in case I have to give him back,” he explained. He let Wonwoo see that he was aware that he’d said the same words to him before.

Dino had always known what Joshua could do. Wonwoo remembered that now.

“Okay,” he said, and it was. For a moment. He started to move away, but was pulled back by the awareness of time that the day was determined to give him. “Dino?”

The other acknowledged the call of his name.

“I’m proud of you.”

Dino was surprised, and Wonwoo knew that if death really was forgetting, then for a moment Dino was alive. Because Wonwoo remembered. And he’d decided he couldn’t lose the chance to say what he had always meant to a second time.

“We’ll talk later,” he concluded as a promise. 

He left, then, feeling Dino’s eyes follow him until he started down the stairs. 

There was nothing more that Wonwoo could do for anyone on the second floor, and downstairs, Woozi could only rest and try to heal, but there were missing members of their household: people that Jeonghan had helped them to gather, and Wonwoo wasn’t willing to lose any more of his family to time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N Best of wishes and happiest of health. ♡


	9. The One That He Forgot

Wonwoo stepped out onto the porch. The door was still swung open, and he turned to kicked it loudly so that it shuddered on its uneven hinge. It was the clue he should have noticed. The door to the house had been wide open when they first arrived home. Whatever connection S. Coups might have had to Jeonghan or the house, it was the open door that had sent him running. Wonwoo saw that now.

He walked into the garden, restless and sick. Autumn was turning again, another season in the endless changes that folded back on themselves over and over. He had felt so relieved that afternoon when they had chased down Hoshi in the woods, imagining the worst, only to find him well, with DK, and incredibly lucky.

They had been expecting horror in the forest only to find it at home.

He ran his finger along the edge of the lilac leaves that had started to purple almost to black. The transplant had taken seven years to bloom properly again, and seven times seven years had passed since he’d last moved it. To think that twice that time had elapsed since it had first been planted seemed inconceivable. So many odd, uneven years.

The day was beginning to feel like the last fall of sand through an hourglass: a convergence of all the random moments into a single pile, but how Joshua and S. Coups and the demon and Mingyu and all the rest of it was connected, he still couldn’t see.

Maybe it was all a coincidence. Or perhaps, as he feared, the broken deal he’d made at St. Marks had drawn the demon back to them. Why, then, did it feel like so much more than that?

The shadow of the house was stretching out longer now as the sun moved toward the tops of the trees. A roll of grey clouds crawled closer from the west in a chilling wind that rattled the leaves.

It was Jeonghan, he decided in the end, that made this all feel impossible. He nudged a series of stones along the gravel until they aligned, scraping them into patterns with the toe of his shoe. The demon from St. Marks had been a problem, but even with Mingyu’s power at its disposal, the idea that it could take Jeonghan down didn’t seem right.

Stranger yet was how they had met the demon at all: how he had taken Mingyu in and chosen to bring him to London only to reunite him with the demon that had sired him—or the idea that Joshua, who claimed to have saved S. Coups from death so long ago, would be in that same place. He wished he could see a way to pull the threads together.

But all he could do now was hear the rattle of the wind carrying the words Dino had said to him years ago, _And when that day comes, I’m sorry._ Whatever happened next, he had to figure out where Mingyu was. He only hoped that Woozi knew something that could be of value in the search. He had nothing else to go on.

In his turn to look over the house, he saw a shimmer of something at the doorway.

He squinted until the shape aligned itself into a figure dripping silver on the porch. The drops did not touch the wood where they fell, and the ghost watched out at him, barely visible in the light. 

Though they hadn’t met properly, Wonwoo knew him from the stores the others had told. Sometimes when he passed over the hill, he would offer a greeting to the air, just in case the ghost was sitting where he couldn’t see him. He had forgotten to do it today. “It’s Seungkwan, right?” 

His outline crackled like a TV switched off in the dark as he nodded. “I’m sorry.” His voice was clear and also distant, like it was travelling both above and below water. “I tried to warn them.”

Wonwoo thought it odd, for a moment, that Joshua had said those same words when they’d arrived, but then he wondered if perhaps it wasn't a coincidence. Joshua was always hearing things. Some of it was real.

“It’s alright,” Wonwoo said, because he knew that Seungkwan was bound to the well where he had drowned long before they’d owned the house. If Seungkwan had made it as far as the porch, it was a feat in its own right.

Seungkwan was still a haze on the steps but he seemed to be waiting for something.

“Were you here the whole time?” Wonwoo asked, although the question might have been futile. Sometimes a ghost was little more than an echo.

A creeping of distress was becoming more evident in the shimmer around Seungkwan as he explained, “I don’t think he knew about me. He couldn’t see me. None of them could see me.” There was a slight rattling sound and Wonwoo glanced over to see a watering can scuttering across the porch.

“You were here,” Wonwoo stated carefully.

Seungkwan’s tone grew darker, and a swirl of leaves kicked along the ground. “He shouldn’t have hurt them.” The ferocity caught Wonwoo off guard, and when one of the lightbulbs shattered from the porchlight, he understood. They were a haunted house in more ways than one.

“You used to live here, didn’t you?” Wonwoo came to the conclusion all at once. “This was your house.”

Seungkwan, framed once more in soft apologies, sat down on the porch steps. He was still not opaque, but his outline had firmed into something recognizably dry and human. He nodded.

Now that Wonwoo had thought of it, it seemed silly he hadn’t realized before. But then something else Seungkwan had said caught his attention. “What did you mean when you said he didn’t know about you?” The demon would know everything that Mingyu knew, and Mingyu knew Seungkwan. He had for a long time.

“He tried to blame Jeonghan for holding him back,” Seungkwan answered, skewing into inverted contrast for a flash that seemed to blacken the windows of the house behind him. But then it had already passed, and Seungkwan added, “I thought Jeonghan was brave for what he did. He didn’t want to hurt Mingyu. The demon knew that.”

The strange sympathy stung, but Wonwoo was almost glad for it, because Seungkwan had confirmed what he suspected. Jeonghan had held back. He had tried to protect Mingyu. And he had paid the price for it.

“When he fell, I didn’t let Mingyu through the door. I don’t know if it helped any.”

Wonwoo didn’t know if what Seungkwan had done mattered. He didn’t have the heart to tell him that in the end, Jeonghan had still been lost, but he said, “Thank you,” because he didn’t really know what else to do. Seungkwan might have made a difference in some other way. Maybe his connection to the house had slowed the demon down, but whatever it was, it wasn’t important now.

“I don’t know why I couldn’t get them to see me,” Seungkwan said, “Woozi can always see me.”

Wonwoo knew enough about ghosts to understand it was the stress of being there instead of the well, but he didn’t have the time to explain. He likely had only moments to learn what he could from Seungkwan before he vanished.

“Did you see anything else that happened in the house?”

Seungkwan shook his head.

Wonwoo couldn’t tell if this was good news or bad news. “What about The8? You know him, right? He was supposed to be home.”

Seungkwan was staring down at the dirt. “Sorry, I thought you knew. He got out. Mingyu hit him pretty hard, though. I don’t know where he went.”

Wonwoo suddenly imagined Seungkwan standing there in the corner of each room, watching what he couldn’t stop. The understanding touched at his tone when he asked with gentling patience,

“Did you hear anything that might have sounded important to you? Anything that struck you as odd?”

They needed to know where the demon had gone: what he was planning now.

Seungkwan looked reluctant, like he wasn’t sure his answer could be trusted. “There was one thing. I wasn’t really sure what to make of it.”

Wonwoo let his silence be a prompt to continue. 

The sky was darkening with clouds and it make Seungkwan easier to see even as it chilled the air. Wonwoo put his hands in his pockets, now empty except for the switchblade.

“It was at the beginning, before he got in Mingyu’s head.”

“What did he say?”

Seungkwan seemed even more reluctant, looking away as he said, “It’s not that he said anything in particular. It was just. . .he was old. Really old.”

Wonwoo felt his forehead furrow, demons could often change their shape. “How old?”

“It’s not something I saw, really. It’s how he felt.”

That wasn’t terribly surprising. Demons were of ancient stock. They were bound to feel old.

Seungkwan suddenly brushed off his words by continuing, “Actually, there was one thing he said. After Joshua.”

“What?”

“He said, _I won’t need you anymore_. I don’t know what he meant by that. He didn’t say that to anyone else.”

Wonwoo wasn’t sure what it meant either. It didn’t make sense to think that the demon would have any specific need of Joshua, but then again, he might just have meant that he’d gotten what he wanted. He’d taken his revenge. He had Mingyu. 

“Thank you,” Wonwoo said, then, to combat the sadness on Seungkwan’s face, “that helps.” He wasn’t sure if it did yet, but he was strangely grateful, then, that Seungkwan had been there. That even if they hadn’t seen him, he’d been with them. No one had been alone. 

“I’m sorry that he took your friend.”

Wonwoo nodded at the confirmation that Mingyu was still possessed. This was what he had feared the demon from St. Marks had been after—the message he’d sent with the words ‘ _fair trade.’_ Mingyu might have always suspected who the demon from St. Marks was to him, but Wonwoo couldn’t help but feel that the timing of all of this was a reproof. That this was the universe’s way of getting back at him for keeping the secret too long, for not telling Mingyu what he knew about the demon’s connection to him. 

“He never came into the house.”

Wonwoo frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Your friend. The one who rides the bike on Saturdays.”

Wonwoo’s heart began to rocket in his chest.

Seungkwan was still talking. “I usually see him from the hilltop. Actually, Mingyu said something to him that was weird. I forgot to mention it. It was part of a poem I think.”

The words slunk past in creeping horror. Of the five of them that had gone to St. Marks and stood against the demon there, only one of them was still unaccounted for. Wonwoo had buried the worry down deep. Had hoped that Jun was still at the church. That maybe he had taken the long way home.

“You saw him at the house?” Wonwoo clarified, “Tall. Darker hair?”

Seungkwan shook his head yes.

The demon from St. Marks was out for revenge, and Jun who had called them all to London was unaccounted for.

“Do you know where they went?”

Seungkwan nodded; he stood and pointed away across the fields.

And Wonwoo’s heart cascaded out of him because he remembered standing there several years before when Dino had spoken his ominous, fatal words. Where the crickets had sung in the empty space and the wheel had seemed to pause in its turning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N In which Wonwoo tries to pull the threads together, the house gets its history, and the demon from St. Marks is out for revenge.
> 
> I hope everyone is well. We're moving into the final act now. Three chapters, an epilogue, and maybe another. With all affection, --K


	10. The Illusion of Choice

The gray sky rolled a bundling and scattering of leaves. His chest heaved to pull in the damp sweetness of the air. Four beats had passed since he’d stopped running where the ground sloped upward toward the field. And time had stopped, but the chill air brushed by him, sweeping toward Jun who stood at the edge of the world alone.

“Hey.” 

It was inadequate—cautious in the open expanse. The field was asleep and wide awake and so very empty.

And Jun was not too far away now. The wind was high and pushing at his hair. He bent in his jacket a bit against it. 

“Hey.” 

His tone held regret and a kind of devotion, like he was happy to see Wonwoo and also disappointed that he’d come.

“Are you alright?”

Jun nodded.

“Are you hurt?”

Jun shook his head no.

They both kept standing at their distance.

“You shouldn’t have come.” Jun’s eyes had a hint of fear and hope but it was squashed down—like he had reason to hide his thoughts.

“I know.” Wonwoo avoided anything in the way of emotion though his heart was alive in his chest. “It’s a trap. Getting back at us for what happened in London.”

Jun shrugged shyly in response, his hands buried deep in his pockets. “Sorry about all this.”

Wonwoo took a step forward before he knew he was doing it. He hadn’t thought he would find Jun alive. In the singular impression of autumn cold it still seemed possible that he wasn’t. But he stood there now with his hands in his pockets and the gray wind in his hair and nothing at all seemed wrong except for his expression which was always apologizing. He would do anything to make him stop apologizing. 

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Jun looked away like something in the clouded sky had caught his attention. It was obvious he greeted the words with pained disbelief. He was gripping a sentence so tightly in his throat that it tensed down through his elbows. When he finally voiced the question, barely loud enough to be heard above the wind, it buzzed with distant vulnerability. “How is everyone?”

Wonwoo didn’t know how to answer: not when he was here without a plan and without backup because of all that he’d left behind at the house. All they had lost or would lose.

Jun’s throat bobbed as he read volumes into his hesitation.

"It’s not what you’re thinking,” Wonwoo fought to explain, thumbing the switchblade in his pocket in absent awareness.

“What am I thinking?” Jun asked with the freshness of emotion he was still holding back. The earnestness tugged like heartstrings, as if the answer could keep him in motion.

Wonwoo studied the white space of Jun’s eyes holding on to him and found his answer. It startled him into sincerity. “No one regrets St. Marks.”

Jun shuffled uncomfortably between his feet. Jun with his softly black eyes and wind-tossed hair, so unaware of himself.

And Wonwoo had meant to stay calm and unflappable through all of this, but autumn ticked time in its rustle through the yellow fields. He had let so many autumns go by as if they were nothing. And the words just left him: “Jun, I hope one day you’ll believe me when I say you aren’t responsible for any of the bad things that happen.”

Jun looked down like doing anything else would make all of the fissures inside of him crack open, because Wonwoo wasn’t speaking of the demon from St. Marks anymore; he was speaking of the evil before it. The one that had made Jun willing to face demons in the dark: his own and everyone else’s. 

Even now, with the clouds burying the sky in another distant autumn it all went back to that.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Jun repeated finally, catching Wonwoo’s eyes in a desperate plea for him to leave.

Wonwoo let it pull him another step closer. He knew it had been too easy to find him. The demon from St. Marks was doing everything possible to draw him out, but he didn’t care. He was going to say what he wanted. “I think some part of you still wants to understand,” he continued against the wind, “Because you haven’t ever talked about it, but I think he might have pretended to care about you, and I think that really messed with the way you saw yourself all this time. But he couldn’t have, Jun.” Not like me.

The final words went unspoken.

Jun’s eyes holding on to him showed that he’d heard them anyway.

It finally brought Wonwoo the rest of the way forward. He crossed the space between them and stopped. “I don’t regret St. Marks,” he told him, “Or Loch Each, or Chartes, or the rest of it.” How could he regret any of the ways that Jun had brought them all together? 

Jun was close enough for Wonwoo to see the small marks that dotted his face. He made a study of that minor constellation as he pressed, “Whatever else you’re thinking, you won, Jun. You don’t need to understand him or forgive him or forgive yourself. You don't need to apologize to us for bringing demons to our door. Because in those moments that you felt at your worst you chose to be better. You asked us all to be better. And that is so incredibly human that most days I can’t stand it.”

There was an ache of regret to the way Jun fought the hesitant smile that settled under his expression as he said, “Haven’t been human in a long time.”

And Wonwoo didn’t know much of anything anymore, but he knew that wasn’t true. He spoke just loud enough to be heard above the wind. “Just because he turned you doesn’t mean he made you.”

There was a heart-wrenching pause, and then Jun strode into him. Wonwoo wrapped his arms around him as Jun hid his face in his neck and he sank into the kind of abandon he had not allowed himself in all the many years of his life.

“Thank you.” Jun’s voice was muffled almost to a whisper, and yet the broadness was immense against the desperate closeness of his jacket under Wonwoo’s chin and his hands pressed at his back and his hair brushing his ear.

Wonwoo chose not to dwell on the finality of it. “Of course.” And then in deeper awareness he added, “Anytime.”

Over Jun’s shoulder, Wonwoo saw the demon standing there watching, wearing Mingyu’s face. 

Jun must have sensed it, too, because he pulled away, his hand brushing at Wonwoo’s side for a moment before he turned. 

“So,” the demon began, moving in closer so that Wonwoo could see the darkness behind his eyes. “Did you choose already?”

Wonwoo looked at Jun, waiting for him to explain. Jun’s hands were hidden uncomfortably inside his sleeves. The wind stole the temporary warmth his imprint had left against Wonwoo’s chest. 

The demon didn’t leave time for discussion. “Of course not. Your family has been incredibly rude to me over the centuries. Hesitants and deal breakers the whole lot of you.” He spoke with faux chastisement, eyes lighting the way that Mingyu’s always did when he smiled. “Me, on the other hand, I’m the fair sort. I keep my word.”

Wonwoo was not going to entertain him by responding. Nor could he summon the rage that he should have felt toward the demon from St. Marks that had haunted them across the years.

This did little to deter the demon. He seemed happy for the opportunity to say what he’d wanted. “I actually should thank you,” he said, pacing a bit closer, hands clasped behind his back like he was giving a lecture. The posturing was so grotesquely unnatural to Mingyu’s countenance it made Wonwoo’s lip curl. 

“I tried so hard in the beginning to find where you all had gone off to after London,” the demon continued, “when all I really had to do was let you make one mistake after another: scrying from inside the house, losing track of Joshua, breaking the wards open in Mingyu’s head. Sure, I had to wait until that mascot imp of yours was away from the garden, but fortunately he had something else to grab his attention.”

“What’s the point,” Wonwoo asked, not interested in hearing all the ways he’d chipped at their defenses for a century.

“Didn’t you get my message?” The demon in Mingyu’s form seemed offended that he didn’t know. “Back in London we never finished our deal. It was hardly fair for you to take Joshua and leave me with nothing. So, you can keep him if you’d like, but I get to keep Mingyu, and as far as I’m concerned, you and Jun there can turn around and go. I won’t bother you again.”

Wonwoo looked to Jun for some hint of explanation, but he couldn’t read his expression beyond that constant apology.

“Why?” he asked. If the demon wanted Mingyu he already had him.

“Because it’s fair,” the demon expelled angrily, as if abhorring fairness and bound to it, “You took something from me, I take something from you. It’s a deal.”

The secret was veiled in the demon’s bitter words, but Wonwoo caught it. A demon couldn’t break a deal. The demon had pursued them across the years because he was bound to. Whatever revenge or fun he’d had along the way, none of it was the point. He needed Wonwoo to agree.

For a moment, he could feel the balance of power shift. “And what will you do when I say no?” he challenged.

The demon flipped the sharpened stake over to him. The one he’d kept hidden behind his back. Wonwoo caught it instinctually.

“Then you can have Mingyu back,” the demon said. But monsters in the dark only presented the illusion of choice, the illusion of power, the illusion of freedom. “But you have to choose something else to lose.”

And Wonwoo would have called his bluff if he hadn’t seen Jeonghan gray and lifeless on the second-floor hallway. No time, no power, no persuasion would stop him. The demon would finish what he had started even if it meant burning everything down to accomplish it. And the only reason the demon hadn’t walked away already was because he needed Wonwoo agree. Because a demon couldn’t break a deal once it had been started.

But this wasn’t a deal. It was a sacrifice. He wanted him to give up Mingyu so he’d presented an impossible choice. One he would never make.

Jun had turned his back to the demon, and he was looking at Wonwoo in a way he could never have described. And Wonwoo knew Jun. Knew what he was asking him. His palms sweat even as he pretended not to be shaken. He wasn’t going to do it. He let the stake drop from his hands.

They could get Mingyu back some other way.

In Jun’s eyes, though, he saw that he wasn’t thinking of the demon from St. Marks now. He was thinking of the evil before it. The one that had made him willing to face demons in the dark. For Jun, even now, it all went back to that. He nodded in strange certainty.

Before Wonwoo could say anything, Jun threw over his shoulder with casual power: “No.”

The demon’s face scrunched at the absurdity of the word. “What?”

Jun turned, his voice a rumbling wave of power, “ _I said no.”_

The demon from St. Marks barked a laugh at the command. He grinned Mingyu’s grin at Wonwoo to share the humor. “Tell him that won’t work on me, Witch.”

“I know,” Jun interrupted, his confidence unshaken, “but it works on him.”

Wonwoo understood at the same moment as the demon what Jun was doing, and he was sure that his face jumped into as much surprise as Jun commanded, “ _You’re stronger than him, Mingyu.”_

The demon’s face curled toward a grimace of rage, but then, impossibly, he seemed to be writhing in his actions, rolling his shoulders too much and curling his fingers as if the push was enough to move him.

Jun pressed forward, his voice rising in power, tension moving down through his elbows just as it had been before. “ _You can beat him, Mingyu.”_

The demon flinched and moved back a step. But it wasn’t Jun alone. Mingyu had been powerful enough to stop the angel in Joshua. He’d broken through the wards Wonwoo had put in his head. He was stronger than Wonwoo had ever told him. They both were.

Jun seemed to stretch taller, and he threw out in full force: _“He can’t have you, Mingyu. You’re going to fight and you’re going to win.”_

The demon was twisting his head and when he started screaming out in anger it suddenly wasn’t him anymore. It was Mingyu. And he was frozen, like it was taking every part of him to stay in control.

Wonwoo flinched forward.

Mingyu’s words grit through his teeth with an intensity that suggested they’d crack if he bit any harder: “Jun, if you’re going to do it, do it now.”

“Do what?” Wonwoo asked in complete bewilderment.

Jun looked at Wonwoo with devotion and regret as he backed toward Mingyu, finally revealing the switchblade he’d kept hidden in his sleeve. Wonwoo’s hands flew automatically to his pockets which no longer held its weight. He remembered Jun’s hand brushing at his side.

“You’ve lost your touch,” Jun joked regretfully, and then he turned and stepped straight into Mingyu.

Wonwoo couldn’t see it happen, but he saw Mingyu’s face catch. He heard the pinched gasp and then the screeching sound of pressure releasing like a kettle when smoke flew off of him and twisted away through the air.

The second the sound evaporated, Mingyu’s legs gave out. Jun caught him awkwardly and lowered him toward the ground the best he could, immediately trading confidence for poorly managed fear and reassurances. “You’re okay! It’s fine. It’s fine.”

As Jun scurried to the side, Wonwoo could finally see the switchblade sticking from Mingyu’s chest near where his heart would be. The world warped into strange tunnels, and for an odd moment Wonwoo could recall in vivid detail the witch’s memorial in Danforth where he and Mingyu had first met. The tall granite stone in the clearing under the wild growth of trees. So strangely similar. A distant autumn.

“It worked,” Mingyu choked as lay back on the ground, “We hurt him.”

“I know. I got your message,” Jun said breathlessly, his hands pressed to either side of the knife still buried in Mingyu’s chest. “Joshua used to say it at the asylum. You knew I’d understand.”

Mingyu nodded over and over like he’d gotten stuck in the motion and it pushed Wonwoo into exhaling, “What the hell is going on?”

“The poem,” Jun said over his shoulder. “ _One two and through and through._ It’s the Jabberwock. Mingyu said it at the house. It’s about killing a monster.” He turned back to Mingyu now. “You were telling me to hurt him.”

Mingyu continued nodding until he suddenly groaned in poorly contained agony, his hand ending in a vice around Jun’s elbow.

“You need to stop moving.” Wonwoo said, drawn into the action now in spite of his shock. He went to kneel at Mingyu’s other side. “If you nick your heart it’s over.”

“I tried to miss,” Jun explained in a hurried whisper, “I think I missed.”

“We needed to hurt him,” Mingyu justified.

“You can’t hurt them,” Wonwoo dismissed, swamped in adrenaline, “you can only send them away.”

Twisting his voice in a mockery of the demon’s inflection, Mingyu said, “ _Anything you do to me you do to him.”_

Wonwoo paused as he began to understand the sacrifice Mingyu had been trying to make and felt a wrench as he looked over the switchblade and the terribly accuracy with which Jun had struck. “Maybe you’re right,” he murmured, because he couldn’t let Mingyu think that his attempts to stop the demon were for nothing. The plan made little sense to him, but there was something brave to it all.

“It’s okay,” Mingyu insisted breathlessly in the sobering atmosphere, “I saw everything this time. I got inside his head. I know how to stop him.” He was interrupted by a minute of pain that he hummed through with sardonic dissonance. When he recovered his breath, he chattered suddenly, “And Wonwoo, I don’t forgive you for lying to me about my demon dad, so you can’t let me die or I’ll haunt you forever.” Mingyu’s eyes kept teetering on the edge of vulnerability. Despite the humor, Wonwoo knew he was scared. 

“We’re not going to let you die,” Jun asserted. He turned to catch Wonwoo into his gaze, “Right? We’ll get Joshua.”

Wonwoo’s booming silence brought Jun’s startled eyes back to Mingyu. 

Although Wonwoo didn’t know how Mingyu had found out, he could see in his eyes that he knew Joshua wasn’t coming. Jun started to realize it, too, paling as he looked between the knife and his hands.

“It’s alright,” Mingyu heaved against Jun’s newly haunted eyes and Wonwoo’s silence, “I told you, I saw everything. He’s going to go back to the house.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because Joshua can heal. It’s what the asylum was about.”

Wonwoo struggled to understand. “Demons don’t need to be healed.”

“He’s mortal.”

Jun and Wonwoo exchanged a look that made it very clear that neither of them expected that--and furthermore, neither of them really believed it. Wonwoo dropped his hand to the top of Mingyu’s head as if he could smooth out his thoughts. “Let’s talk more later,” he said.

Mingyu shook his head. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

Wonwoo waited and let the words twist into darker and darker iterations of meaning.

And Mingyu plowed on, “He’s not _mortal_ mortal. We can’t kill him. At least not yet. But we can hurt him. He ages. He’s not what you think. You’re not going to believe it, Wonwoo.”

“Okay,” Wonwoo began, trying to keep Mingyu calm. “Even if wounding him worked, why would we want him to go back to the house? We don’t have any way of stopping him. He’ll just keep coming back and—"

Mingyu waved his hand to get him to shut up. “I told Josh what to do.”

“How?” The demon had been inside Mingyu’s head. Anything Mingyu knew the demon would have known, too. “When?”

“I prayed.” Mingyu raised an eyebrow to share that he knew it was clever and terribly ironic. “Figured demons don’t use that frequency.”

Wonwoo had to admit, it was immensely clever. He let the admiration settle onto his face for a moment before it evaporated in the truth of what he knew. Whatever 3D chess game Mingyu had been playing: however he had managed to recruit Jun and trick the demon, none of it mattered now. Joshua wasn’t in play anymore.

“What was the plan,” he asked softly, just to keep Mingyu talking. It didn’t really matter now. Joshua wouldn’t be Joshua anymore. There would be no healing for Mingyu or the demon.

Mingyu took longer to recover his breath this time. Jun had a hold of his arm where the sleeve covered it and Mingyu’s fingers were unsettled at his elbow. Wonwoo thought, then, of their willingness to follow him across oceans and borders. Of how far away they all were from the places they’d first called home. Yet here on the hill near the fields in some other autumn, they didn’t feel very far away from where they belonged. And it made him trust that maybe, just maybe, Mingyu knew what he was doing.

“You said he was mortal,” Wonwoo prompted him.

“He’s cursed,” Mingyu explained, “He lied when he said he keeps his word. He’s broken it before. And that’s how we’ll get him.”

“How?” Wonwoo asked him.

Mingyu met his eyes with a spark of old mischief. “We have a secret weapon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N A Story in Three Acts 
> 
> In which Wonwoo gives Jun his folklore nickname  
> The demon from St. Marks presents its deal  
> And the pieces find their final places on the chess board. 
> 
> I wrote the first act of this chapter in 2017. I might actually post the original on tumblr for the sheer insanity of how long it took me to write the final version which ended up being really close to the original. I have done nothing but edit and reedit act one of this chapter for 3 years in between other writing pieces.  
> This is the end game of the story. There are two chapters left and they will be posted together. (They're both /actually/ ready to go this time, not "one more edit" ready like this one was weeks ago, haha). I'm sure there are a lot more questions than answers now. Typical half-told story madness from me. <3 I will see you all in the next chapter or in the comments. 
> 
> All my best <3 and to those that celebrate, have a happy thanksgiving. --K


	11. A Plan

S. Coups sat in the hallway alone. His legs stretched out and his arms fell forgetfully. If he listened carefully, he could hear the hum of the fridge downstairs. Nothing else really seemed to matter. 

In front of him was Joshua. He lay in silence, his head on his arm, and he did not move. To his left, Jeonghan was stretched out gray and lifeless. S. Coups could barely breath enough for himself, never mind the three of them.

He remembered the brightness in Joshua’s eyes when he had turned to him.

_I’m going to do something. And it might not make a lot of sense and you might hate me for it, but you have to trust me, okay? Even if you don’t know why._

And now he sat in the overwhelming stillness of a house that had held all of their memories for over a century and for some time before that. A house that couldn’t hold on to the horror of the afternoon that had left it so quiet now. He wished that the house felt shuttered and haunted, not peaceful with the golden light that reached the hallway through some bright window.

He had done nothing of note since finding himself profoundly alone. He knew that he should probably be doing something, but as long as he sat there in the hallway he could exist outside of time. He could exist in any moment that the house had held: could hear the echo of voices and laughter even with the uselessness of being there with them and without them. When nothing had gone right.

He jumped a mile at the snap of Hoshi appearing and felt his heart beat for the first time in what seemed like hours as it pounded out of his chest.

“Hey,” Hoshi greeted, without any concept of formality or personal space, “We need you.”

“Why?” S. Coups questioned out of hopelessness more than curiosity.

“Wonwoo has to stay with Mingyu, but the demon’s coming here to the house and we’re going to stop him.”

S. Coups was still trying to recover enough to understand what Hoshi was saying, his voice was too loud and expressions too bright after the deadening silence.

“Hoshi, what are you—”

“You didn’t leave the porch light on so I knew something was wrong and I checked in with Wonwoo and you’re not going to believe any of it but we can win this.”

S. Coups wasn’t sure that was possible. The demon had already won.

Hoshi bobbed until he got S. Coups’s focus back. “We’ve got a plan, Coups, but we need you to pull it off.”

And S. Coups didn’t see the sense or the point. “It’s not me you want,” he said, and he didn’t understand what Hoshi could possibly ask of him. Somehow he hadn’t noticed. Maybe, if he had spoken to Wonwoo, he had been told that Joshua brought Jeonghan back. Maybe he’d been told that they’d all be okay in the end. He would only need to turn to see it wasn’t true.

The defeat pricked at his eyes. “What’s the point, Hoshi?”

Hoshi stilled from the energy that always bounded over him. 

S. Coups averted his gaze, digging the base of his palm at the corner of his eye.

The wisdom in the imp’s face, then, felt foreign and wide open. He disappeared, and it was only a second later when he reappeared with a sword laid across his hands.

S. Coups looked at it in recognition that almost stirred something inside of him.

Hoshi waited as he looked over the blade, then told him with uncommon sensitivity, “You’re not alone, Seungcheol. You were never alone. And we’ve got a plan and it’s stupid and it’s crazy but that’s sort of our thing around here. And we need you.”

S. Coups accepted the sword, gripping the handle in his hands. It didn’t seem a burden as it once had. And looking over the blade now he thought of how much had been sacrificed to protect this house. Of all that Jeonghan and Joshua had been willing to give up. It was only pointless now if they lost. “Okay,” he said, “What do you need me to do?”

Hoshi pulled a familiar piece of parchment from his back pocket, the corner of his eyes pinching toward a smile. “We make you king.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N The penultimate chapter, small as it might be, putting the remaining chess pieces onto the board. 
> 
> There will be a second update later today with the final chapter.  
> I hope the sun is shining where-ever you. -K


	12. The Foundation of the House

The demon from St. Marks stumbled into the corporeal form he had been trapped in for centuries. He was short of the actual house, but had succeeded in reaching the beginnings of the dirt walking path at the property line. Hand covering the mortal wound open in his chest he dragged himself angrily forward. 

The door still hung open, a beckoning sign. The house had lost all of its defenses. He would be healed, as he had been many times over, and have no need to drag the smarting wound with him any longer.

With the sun dropped low under the covering of clouds, he trudged up the porch steps. 

The door slammed shut.

He growled his discontent at the timing of the wind and twisted the handle. The metal doorknob rattled but did not budge. He wrenched at it: pulled and shoved and kicked until the wound screamed out with him. The house would not let him in. He turned and kicked a shattering of glass shards off the edge of the porch.

“You don’t live there,” an old voice crackled. 

He whipped toward the sound in a rage.

An old man was perched on the stone wall that had slid apart to the side of the property. The wall was a product of agriculture and not of design, as was the man himself. He leant on a shepherd’s hook. 

The demon stormed across the yard. Even wounded, he could find a way to rent the man to pieces for the twinkle in his one good eye. 

Bent low, with both hands gripping the rod that propped him upright, the old man remained undisturbed by the menacing figure who swept toward him. Even in his mortal form, the demon was touched with darkness, yet the old man did not flinch or waver.

“What are you to me, old man?” the demon spat, sniffing and reaching for something to tell of the man’s business.

The old man’s breath wheezed twice in his chest, but he was sporting a nearly toothless grin as he answered: “A trap.” The illusion of the old man was gone now. Woozi sat in his place.

There was a metallic clink of a lighter flicking open. Woozi smirked as he sparked the flame and dropped it to the dirt. The fire burst to life, whipping around the sulfur and charcoal hidden in the grass, circling the demon in low flame that burnt from green to blue.

As soon as the fire finished its circuit, Woozi listed, his weight dropping down onto his hand on the wall. He was still laughing in gasping breaths when S. Coups stepped out from behind the tree into sight.

“Hoshi, get him out of here.”

When Hoshi appeared, the demon lurched in hissing fury toward the edge of the circle. The fire smarted and held. While Hoshi helped prop Woozi upright to pull him away, he curled his face into rage at the demon in the circle of fire. “I’m not done with you,” he threatened, but he did not stay.

Now S. Coups stood alone; the sword held upright before his eyes. 

The demon laughed his amusement. “You can stab me all you want with mortal blades. I will not fall.”

“Looks like we already got you pretty good,” S. Coups answered to the wound that stood out against his chest.

“I can neither be killed nor banished,” the man menaced. He held all the cards against this mortal barely more than any ordinary man. One who did not know his name. “Wounds are nothing to me.”

“Alright, Physician, heal thyself,” S. Coups goaded.

The demon shifted slowly from his anger as he stared over the one who held ground against him. He was insignificant, though he had been there from the beginning. Fragments of him were scattered in the memories of all the others. “We have narrowly missed meeting over the years,” the demon hummed knowingly.

S. Coups’s hands choked higher on the hilt of the sword, tension bunching into his muscles.

Now that he’d reckoned with him, amusement lit in the demon to know the strange intertwining of fate. “You were the one he saved in the forest in the dark. The one who told the child a lie that wasn’t a lie. Who said death didn’t feel alone.”

“I know why you’re here,” S. Coups deflected.

“Yes,” the demon said, seeing it was true, and finding the strand of memory falling down the well of fondness, “But you don’t know how I found him in the first place.”

There was finally the waver he’d been looking for in the other’s liquid eyes. How little he knew of the history that had circled their lives back together. “I know you,” he hummed through the haze of flame, “What a shame to waste such grace on you. You are a failed protector of his house. A wolf in sheep’s clothing as dangerous as he is useless. A failed king who stands alone.”

“He’s not alone.”

The demon whipped around, rising taller in spite of the wound. His face broke into a vicious grin. “The child in the dark.”

Dino stood behind him at the edge of the circle.

The demon scanned with mock amusement at how he carried himself now. “I see the years have changed us both.”

“Not you,” Dino countered, “You’re still trapped in that body I put you in all those centuries ago.”

The demon hulked and glowered in his human form; the one Dino had forced him into in a dark night in a forest: when he’d opened the door that shouldn’t be opened and called on a name that shouldn’t be called. “How clever you must think you are,” the demon hissed, “the child in the dark testing unfamiliar magic.”

“And what do you have to brag about?” Dino asked, “You sulk from moment to moment in a half-life: mortal and suffering because of what you did. What’s it been like bound to the world of the living?”

“What’s it been like bound to death?” the demon snapped before smoothing himself back over. The transition back to calm and control started slowly as the darkness behind his pupils seemed to extend. “I’ve found ways to manage my mortality,” he began. He turned to catch S. Coups’s eye. “To heal and sustain myself through the grace of that same angel that brought you back from the dead. Poor Joshua, trading life for memory, falling time and again. Forgotten and alone.”

“Stop it.”

“Why?” the demon asked, “Who would listen to you?”

“I would,” Dino said.

The demon swung to face the child in the dark who long ago had been told by the one who held the sword that death didn’t feel alone. What a fantastic lie and horrible truth.

“I gave you a gift, reaper,” the demon said with broiling calm, “You knew nothing of death. I showed you its ways and you choose to squander it haunting an old life that’s moved on without you.”

Dino folded his arms. “You’re one to talk. Did you recognize Wonwoo when you saw him at the asylum? Did you make the connection? How frustrating it must be for you to be beaten by the same line of witches over and over again.”

“Beaten?” the demon hissed, “I have won in every way that matters.”

Dino paused to toss his head and recenter his gaze. “You’ve won nothing. You lost Joshua and when you set your sights on Mingyu he outsmarted you. You have no one to heal you, no body to borrow. You’re right back where you started. All these years of suffering and you learned nothing of being human.”

“I have no use for the child now,” the demon rumbled cruelly, “I’m sure you’ve felt his time is at hand, reaper.”

“No,” S. Coups challenged, shifting in his stance like he was itching to strike, “He’s stronger than you. He’ll pull through.”

“Will he?” the demon paced around to face him, pushing at the edge of the circle, “Or will he fall like all the others you failed to protect?”

“We had a deal,” Dino called to draw him back around, “Back then, I said that I’d let you go if you did what I asked. You betrayed me and it cursed us both.”

“Cursed?” The demon felt the fire dimming, burning lower at the edge of the circle. He bided his time. “I gave you power: what you had always wanted. And you gave me a form to walk the surface of the Earth undetected. I am the name that shouldn’t be spoken. You released me onto the world, and now I haunt the steps of mankind without needing to be called.”

“He could free you,” S. Coups said sharply, “You’re only bound to him until you finish the deal.”

The demon laughed, and for a moment, it almost seemed to be another voice, hissing and twisted and ancient. “Is this the plan? To bring the reaper here to finish me off?” His grin grew wide and wicked. S. Coups faltered at the force of his words. “ _I only make deals with the living._ I made a deal with a child who no longer exists.” He swung back to Dino as the fire burnt lower in the circle. “I cannot be cast to the darkness. I can neither be killed nor banished now. I will stay unchanging. Permanent. Bound to the Earth. There is none living to command me.”

Dino tsked. “About that.” He took S. Coups’s knife out of his pocket and held it over his palm. He let enough time lapse for the demon’s questioning anger to turn toward realization. “Joshua wanted me to tell you to “get fucked.”

The demon shrieked an inhuman rage as Dino cut into his hand. The red blood dripped between the cracks in his closed fist and he spoke over it as the droplets dribbled onto the dirt. “I kindly ask that when Seungcheol kills you, you go straight to hell.”

The demon twisted and morphed, breaking from its corporeal form into something lurching and sulking. The fire had burnt out in the circle. The demon hissed and cackled, “ _A mortal blade cannot slay me, fool. I am free.”_

“Hoshi!” At S. Coups’s cry, the imp appeared. Inhuman rage sparked along the demon’s spine at Hoshi’s grin as he grabbed S. Coups’s hand and vanished. The blade in his hands flashed a vibrant green. The demon shrieked and lunged. And S. Coups struck clean through. 

With a flash of iron and steel, the demon from St. Marks—the name that shouldn’t be called, which had haunted them across the centuries—was rent apart, vanishing in a crackling of sparks. S. Coups stayed twisted to the side, heaving in adrenaline and disbelief. The tip of the sword touched the grass.

A single burning piece of ash floated down to settle in the dirt. 

Dino stepped on it and ground it into dust.

In another flash, Hoshi reappeared. “Wow!” he shouted, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck from side to side with a bounce on his toes, “I haven’t done that in _years!”_

S. Coups did not share his excitement. But it was done. He had done what they had set out to do.

He straightened up and passed Hoshi the sword. Then with a sniff, he pushed through his exhaustion to cross the burnt-out circle to where Dino stood staring at his hand.

He threw an arm around the younger and pulled him into a hug, his other arm hanging down, still stinging from the clash of the sword.

And he just breathed in for a moment—because the strangest thing of all about having Dino back was that he once more smelled alive. Then he squeezed him tighter, his words muffled with the way his chin pressed onto his shoulder, “I should have done that when Joshua first brought you back.”

Dino raised his arms to hug him in return but kept his hand bent away, like he didn’t want to get any blood on his shirt. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” S. Coups told him, pulling back from the hug so he could share his expression. “He knew what he was doing. It’s done now.”

“Well, then!” Hoshi announced, kicking the flat of the sword with his foot so that it bounced upward with all the casual irreverence of a hacky-sack. “Guess we saved the day.” 

And S. Coups had thought that even Hoshi, despite his poor understanding of death, would have had a hard time celebrating with what they had lost. Even now, he wanted to lie on the ground and stay there until the world dissolved to nothing. And if he’d been alone, he would have.

Hoshi kicked the blade high enough that the balance shifted and it fell back to rest on his shoulder. With his free hand, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out the parchment just as he had before. “You did it,” Hoshi announced, handing the page over to him like a diploma, “You defended the house.”

“Thanks, Hoshi.” He spoke without energy, taking the parchment and holding it like a memory. 

“It’s too bad that you can’t read, though, seeing as you’re king.”

S. Coups was not prepared to joke. And he wasn’t entirely sure that Hoshi was joking either, although it certainly seemed so in the levity of his aura. Still, he had learned today not to take time for granted. He would rather have Hoshi with all that he was than lose him. 

Hoshi was waiting, rocking on his heels, and alternating his wry expression from S. Coups to the parchment. 

He finally did what he supposed Hoshi wanted and rolled it open. Its stitched scar ran toward the center like a scythe. 

“You know,” Hoshi began, “if you were trying to translate Scots-Gaelic, you could have asked the one person in the house who’s been around here long enough to know it.” He smiled, and pointed along the place where the scar ran through. S. Coups could feel Dino craning to see as well.

“ _Banais_ is marriage,” Hoshi explained, “but that word isn’t _banais. It’s bunait._ It means foundation.”

S. Coups was too tired to understand. “What difference does that make?”

“I’m saying it’s not a land marriage, it’s a way to protect the foundation of the house.” 

“So what?” Dino wondered in genuine curiosity.

“So, don’t take everything so literally.” Hoshi’s eyes were alight with mischief and fidelity.

S. Coups tried to understand, but the adrenaline was swirling away into numbness and he couldn’t get his mind into order. He couldn’t tell how the distinction made any difference. “What does that mean?”

_“It means turn around.”_

S. Coups’s shoulders stiffened. Dino turned, but S. Coups clung to Hoshi’s eyes and dug for a promise. He couldn’t face another disappointment today. The voice was one that he’d known for centuries. When he felt a tap at the back of his thoughts he dissolved, melting into his hands.

Hoshi turned him toward the house. And when S. Coups slid his hand up toward his forehead to glance through a well of tears, he saw him standing there in clothes stained blue. 

Dino grabbed S. Coups’s shoulder in a blind shock and support. And then Hoshi pushed him forward, and S. Coups picked up the momentum and crossed the space where early autumn leaves had only just started to fall, where the breeze had picked up the sun’s descent to the horizon beneath the clouds, where the golden light met him as Jeonghan dragged him into his arms.

“I don’t understand,” Dino said.

Hoshi leaned toward him to answer, “S. Coups used a ritual to protect the foundation of the house.” His words were light with satisfaction. “The foundation of the house isn’t a thing, though, it’s a person. It’s Jeonghan.”

Beyond it all, Seungkwan was a shimmer of light at the doorway. Hoshi saw him watching and nodded. It was an acknowledgement and an apology. Seungkwan’s aura was almost a smile when he nodded back. Then he was gone, the porch empty where he’d stood; the door open once more to the house at the bottom of the hill. 

Hoshi was left wishing that Seungkwan could have a second chance of his own, but he knew there was no reviving an echo.

He turned to smile at Dino who he had only just met. “Welcome home, by the way. It’s been nice to finally meet you.”

Dino nodded and kept his amusement close, for he had not met Hoshi for the first time today, though Hoshi would not remember that.

“Just wait until Wonwoo sees you,” Hoshi added. For a moment Dino’s eyes were soft and yearning for that promised reunion. But speaking of Wonwoo had reminded Hoshi that the job wasn’t over. Not everyone was coming home, yet. He lifted the sword again, thinking of the way the metal reflected the light.

“What are you going to do with it now?” Dino asked quietly, not wanting to cause a disturbance.

Hoshi scanned the metal of the blade and answered, “I think I can get us one more miracle.” He gathered up his energy and yelled across to the merging silhouettes in the garden, “Try to actually leave the porch light on for me this time, will you?”

S. Coups pulled back but he was too much of a wreck to respond. Jeonghan did it for him, “Where are you going?” he demanded, sharp and affectionate and alive, though his light was tempered in awareness that he wasn’t the sacrifice that the day had taken.

Hoshi answered mischievously while he stared up at the sword. _“Somebody owes me a wish.”_ And he vanished.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N  
> There's an epilogue to come to tie up our loose ends. For the moment, I am so, so happy to have finished this story with you. I may return to ramble but for now: all my best. --K
> 
> *Ramble* If you're interested in the origin of all the folklore nicknames (like "the foundation of the house" ) I made a post here: https://kayeblaise.tumblr.com/post/636352125834821632/folklore-nicknames-in-depth


	13. Epilogue:  And Every House a Home.

A dance of light and the sound of birds woke him. Before he even opened his eyes, he paused to inhale the undue softness of the morning breeze and listen to the leaves rustling through the crack in the window. Everything seemed right with the world, until the weight of the covers and the sensation of floating reminded him that he did not sleep in beds.

Eyes nudged open, he searched for familiarity. 

He found it in the walnut bureau, still tilted back against the wall and dinged in all the right places. The edge of a paper card tucked loosely into the mirror was animated by the same motion that stirred the curtains, the sun creating abstract shapes on the knotted floor.

All was familiar except for a darkened stain in the hardwood and a line of whiter paint against the windowsill. The brushstrokes were just barely feathered over the wallpaper in someone’s carelessness: a new thumbprint to mark the room’s memories.

He dragged his hand curiously along the sheets. His head clung to the same cotton fuzz as the fabric.

A shifting of feet to the floor was accompanied by the creak of a chair. “Oh good! You’re awake.”

The8 rolled his head toward the voice and found DK grinning at him, his elbows on his knees. 

He stared back in confusion, eyes sometimes trailing to the carved shapes along the top of the wooden chair that DK had pulled to the side of the bed or the split in one of its spindles.

"How are you feeling?” DK asked, casual and bright, so that the question felt like a courtesy rather than a concern.

“How long was I asleep?” The8 wondered, having the vague recollection that DK had already left.

“About a week.”

His face fell. That couldn’t be right.

“You haven’t been asleep the whole time,” DK clarified easily, as if he could anticipate his questions, “You’ve been up a bit, you’re just forgetting. Wonwoo says that that should stop happening soon.”

The8 was still trying to figure out how DK could be there, when he was interrupted by the other grabbing the covers and dragging them to the foot of the bed.

“Come on,” he beckoned. “You have to try to eat something when you’re up.”

The8 did feel a pit of hunger in his stomach, but his current attention was on mapping the ridge of the wound he had rediscovered under his hairline: the one that had apparently robbed him of the past seven days.

In the end, he let DK pull him upright. He felt uncertain on his feet, but DK was steady, and he leant into that to push back the strangeness as they moved through the familiar house. The floor creaked and his head throbbed in a steady rhythm, but he couldn’t find a reason to complain as DK chattered on about things he could barely understand.

When they stepped into the living room it was already occupied. 

Jeonghan and Joshua were sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, and Woozi sat across from them, his voice clear even though his back was turned:

“Stop cheating.”

“We’re not cheating.”

“I can clearly see you cheating.”

Jeonghan grinned, the smile lighting up his face. “We’ve never even played this game before.” He elbowed Joshua so that he finally looked up from the cards. “Right?”

Joshua took a moment to shift his attention to the conversation he had missed, but he still nodded his agreement when Jeonghan stared at him for a few seconds too long. “Right.” He looked back at the cards in his hand and finally picked one to put on the table.

“See, you just did it again!” But Woozi’s accusation was left unchallenged, because Jeonghan had caught sight of who had entered the room.

“Hey!” he greeted, already getting to his feet, “Look who’s up!” The genuine smile on his face as he stepped over the edge of the coffee table was fixed on The8.

“Tenth time’s the charm,” Woozi said, stabilizing the soda can that had been upset by Jeonghan’s movement.

The8 stiffened when Jeonghan pulled him into a hug, startled by the seemingly unwarranted affection of it. He leant back to look down at him in confusion and then over at DK in the hope that he would give any hint about what was going on.

By then, though, Jeonghan had stepped back to stare at him in a way that stabilized the nerves he hadn’t yet processed. “We’ll get you caught up,” he said knowingly.

The8 clung to the familiar glint in Jeonghan’s eyes, until he heard him elaborate, _“You did something very brave and very stupid which I will remind you of when you’re ready.”_

He figured that that sounded about right, but couldn’t recall what the brave or stupid things he’d done were. His head must really have been cracked open, because he winced as DK suddenly announced—“I’m going to the kitchen, now!”—his voice louder than The8 had ever heard him. 

Never one to pull of subtlety, DK winked at Jeonghan in what he probably thought was a clandestine way and then swung off around the back of the couch toward the kitchen, leaving The8 even more bewildered than before.

In his stupor, he let Jeonghan grab his hand and walk him forward to the coffee table, demanding “Doesn’t he look better?”

There was a general hum of agreement, but Joshua stared at him for a bit, like he was still trying to puzzle him out. The8 noticed for the first time the compress that was bandaged to the side of his neck. When Jeonghan left to scoot over and sit in the armchair behind Joshua, The8 turned his attention to Woozi, for the first time seeing the signs of battle over him as well. They stayed staring at each other for a long moment in silent communication until Woozi finally raised his eyebrow in acknowledgement of his unspoken question. He nodded back, because he had the faintest impression that the other had saved his life.

Without the couch in the way, The8 could now see that there was someone sitting on Woozi’s other side: someone he had never seen before. 

They seemed young and old in the same glance. The gray sweatshirt they wore was overlarge and familiar enough for him to know it was borrowed. The way the stranger had his arm dropped casually over his knee, the playing cards in his hand pressed face down, felt decidedly human, but the stranger looked at him with a familiarity that The8 couldn’t explain. He had not yet spoken, but The8 recognized an immortal when he saw one.

“Oh,” Joshua’s voice interrupted, “This is. . .”

“Dino,” Jeonghan supplied before the pause became too obvious. He maintained his casual air, but he was fidgeting with Joshua’s ear like he wasn’t aware that he was doing it.

“Yeah,” Joshua continued, not sounding particularly certain. “Dino is Wonwoo’s nephew.”

“Don’t say that,” Dino rejected vehemently, waving his hand in excessive dismissal, “We’re related. That’s all.”

The8’s brain was still swishing, so he decided not to think too much on it, instead offering his hand as people usually expected him to. Dino stretched out far enough to take it.

“Nice to meet you,” The8 said.

There was a twinkle in Dino’s eye when he said, “We’ve met.”

The8 got the feeling he didn’t mean in the last few days. 

He felt suddenly ungrounded. He turned from his place at the head of the coffee table to scan the people around him.

“Did we win?” He wasn’t entirely sure what they’d been fighting, but he saw the evidence of all that must have happened, and it confused him as much as the calm and goodwill.

“We did,” Jeonghan said with a dip of his head for emphasis. “Slayed the beast, saved the day, everyone came home.” Somehow it didn’t feel like the whole story. Jeonghan had stopped fidgeting with Joshua’s ear as if noticing for the first time that he was doing it.

The8’s hand returned to the ridge under his hair in sudden recollection. “Where’s Mingyu?”

“Present.”

He followed the direction of the voice and found that Mingyu was sitting in the old maroon armchair in the far corner of the room. Next to him, Hoshi was perched on the server. He waved his fingers in greeting, eyes tilting toward a smile. The8 moved around the couch to get closer.

Mingyu’s eyes were closed, but he popped one open when The8’s shadow fell over him. He couldn’t tell exactly what was wrong, but he could see the beginnings of a white bandage poking out from under his collar. The way he was sitting in the chair was simultaneously stiff and sinking. 

“What got you?” The8 wondered, with no allowance for sympathy in the question.

Mingyu grinned, his eyes closed again though he didn’t sound particularly tired. “Jun stabbed me.”

“What’s a stabbing between friends?” Woozi called across, which made a laugh huff out of Mingyu that definitely didn’t agree with him, though even his wincing was amused.

“Hey, Wonwoo said it’s a miracle I survived,” Mingyu whined with a poorly disguised smile.

The8 noticed that Hoshi, who had been unusually quiet, was smiling to himself, eyes cast toward the far wall in secretive amusement.

“You and Mingyu are the co-founders of the _incredibly brave and incredibly stupid club_ ,” Jeonghan explained, leaning over the back of the chair to join in the conversation.

The8 was beginning to wonder if they had all rehearsed their lines over the past week, the varying levels of joy and amusement setting the room alight and making him feel even more like a stranger.

He was resigning himself to the fact that he was going to be out of the loop forever when S. Coups suddenly popped into the room. “Oh good,” he exhaled at the sight of him, in what might have been exhaustion or relief. He disappeared and reappeared almost as quickly, marching across the room with what appeared to be some attempt at a cake sitting lopsided on a dinner plate. He plopped it unceremoniously on the coffee table despite objections from the card-players.

“We made you a cake,” he announced, gesturing with failing fanfare at the vaguely cake-shaped object before them.

“Arguably,” Dino quipped. 

“Well, we wanted to _buy_ a cake,” S. Coups defended, lobbying his case toward The8, “but you weren’t holding anything down yet, so we ate that one before it went to waste and then Mingyu tried to make you this.”

“ _Wonwoo_ made it,” Mingyu corrected. “I barely touched it.”

As if summoned, Wonwoo appeared into the room then, holding a stack of plates. “I’ve been telling you the oven’s broken,” he justified, looking to Jeonghan for assistance, “Haven’t I?”

“Should buy a new one,” Jeonghan noted with a kind of warmth not normally reserved for a new appliance.

Wonwoo turned his attention to Mingyu as he dropped the plates off on top of the server next to Hoshi. “And don’t sell yourself short, Gyu. You wrote that nice message all by yourself.”

The8 leaned over the back of the couch to finally read the messy lettering on the cake: _Sorry for Breaking Your Skull._

He scanned the room of smiling faces staring at him and didn’t know what to say.

“Where’s Jun?” he asked, because he knew he had left the house and made it to the church, but he couldn’t remember what had happened after.

“It’s Saturday again,” S. Coups explained.

When his forehead furrowed in confusion, Woozi added helpfully, “He’s probably replacing the parts of the church you bled on.”

The distinct sound of shoes being kicked off hard enough to hit the wall contradicted them, as did Jun’s muffled call of, “I’m here!” His voice sprang up as he swung into the room. “I’m here, sorry.”

“You didn’t miss anything,” Wonwoo assured.

“Come on,” Jeonghan said, to shift them back to focus. He got to his feet and lifted the cake off of the coffee table. He carried it to the higher surface of the old record cabinet and seemed distracted in his own thoughts when he called, “Josh, can you grab me a knife?”

In the outbreak of movement as people shifted and converged, it took a moment to notice that Joshua looked at a loss from the request.

“I’ll get it,” Dino offered, eyes quick and assessing.

And The8 thought, not for the first time, that maybe Joshua was a little different than he had been before. He didn’t seem distracted or distant, he just seemed confused about who to look at or what to say, like he was re-learning how the house and its people worked. The8 could relate. 

He watched Dino, who strangely seemed more at ease, slide by Jeonghan with a quick squeeze at his shoulder before he headed to the kitchen.

The8 studied the strange new balance of the room with wonder and confusion until Wonwoo bumped his shoulder and handed him a plate.

“I’ll tell you later,” he promised.

The8 nodded, his arms uncrossing in relief as he took the offered plate. As the room continued to shuffle and rearrange itself, he suddenly found himself standing next to Jun. “Sorry for kicking you out of your room,” he told him after a moment, not sure what else to say. He often stole Jun's room, but only in the day time. If he'd been out for a whole week, that meant Jun had probably had to find somewhere else to sleep.

Jun shrugged out of the thanks with half-made dismissals that sounded almost embarrassed. His gaze was distracted over where Wonwoo now stood across the room. Wonwoo must have felt them staring because he turned and flashed a brief smile. The8’s eyebrows were just beginning to furrow in consideration of it when DK reappeared, calling loudly above the crowd, “Come on!” 

It took a moment for The8 to see he was waving a camera in the air.

There were groans and shouts of support, but it was S. Coups’s voice rising above the others to encourage compliance with DK’s request that got them moving. Jeonghan started to drag everyone closer, adding that they all owed him one.

“You won't be able to play that card forever, you know,” Wonwoo warned.

To which Jeonghan replied, “You watch me.” And whatever that meant, if one thing was for certain, Jeonghan was more than capable of playing a guilt card for all eternity.

As he was jostled into place with the rest of the group, The8 ended up with S. Coups’s arm thrown around his neck. He looked from him to DK in sudden alarm. DK wasn’t wearing the coin that had always hung around his neck. 

For a frightening moment, he felt certain that something was wrong: that he was dreaming or trapped in some other world, surrounded by golems or doppelgangers, but then S. Coups ruffled at the back of his hair the way he always did, and The8 found himself automatically pretending to be annoyed, shooting daggers from his eyes. And the way S. Coups was bright with happiness was so terribly familiar and reassuring that he relaxed. Whatever else had changed, there were enough reminders still that he was home. 

DK was calling directions still and gesturing everyone closer. Hoshi had come up next to him and surged onto his toes to point out something on the camera that DK dismissed with overblown confidence. Woozi had gone and helped shove Mingyu to his feet to join them though he was rolling his head in complaint and moved stiffly to the edge of the crowd. He shuffled in beside Joshua who looked at the people to either side of him as if unsure he’d found the right place.

The8’s head was swimming in all the noise and then the first sudden flash of light that went off before he’d even turned to the camera. There was new shouting from Mingyu as he complained that DK had done this or that wrong and The8 recognized at once that it was Mingyu’s camera that DK held clumsily in his hands. As soon as he recognized it, he felt the pull of familiar eyes watching him. 

Off in the corner of the room, he caught Seungkwan smiling quietly at the group. 

The8 kept his gaze level at the ghost who saw him and simply tapped a finger to the side of his nose in acknowledgement. The8 nodded, mouth pressed into a line that was close to a smile without its loudness, unsure how he had gotten away from the well, but happy that he was there.

Woozi’s complaint for everyone to keep it down stole back his attention; he’d said something about cursing them and all their descendants. An unfamiliar laugh burst above it all which he traced back to Dino, who almost knocked Wonwoo over falling into him. And Wonwoo’s smile then was like the sun breaking through the clouds.

In the middle of that chaos, despite the mess and the ache in his head, he found himself smiling, too. He looked past the camera this time to DK, thinking of a not so long ago time when they’d both been uncertain about the way home. Confident now that he'd found his way there, he listened to the countdown DK was calling above the noise and waited for the flash to light up once again.

***

Jeonghan stepped out from the chaos and into the sunlight. The muffled bursts and swells of laughter from inside the house carried even into the garden. He paused to enjoy it, drawing the living air deep into his lungs, fingers running momentarily along the lilac leaves.

When the time seemed right, he crossed over to where Woozi was already standing in a reprieve from the reveling, staring up at the house. 

“So.” Jeonghan said to start the conversation as he took up the place beside him.

“So,” Woozi answered.

It was more than enough to capture the sentiment. Standing between autumn and home where the world felt fresh and familiar: always new and always the same. The rooftop shingles seemed a cobbled way under the sun that warmed against the cool air. The quiet was a break that felt earned only with the sounds of life still pressing against every window in the house frozen in time.

It was a moment to share confidences: to pass them from hand to hand like thoughtless stones. A touch of anticipation rolled in Jeonghan as he tripped out lightly, “I was just inside listening to Hoshi.”

Woozi hummed with telling unconcern.

Jeonghan tried to keep his anticipation to the far corner of his mouth. “He was telling The8 how you all managed to slay the beast, sparing no details, of course, and he mentioned that the illusion you pushed to help trap the demon was a shepherd.” He glanced from the corner of his eye. 

Woozi kept looking up at the house, his mouth pursing a little in acknowledgment but betraying nothing else.

“A shepherd with one eye.”

“That so?” Woozi said elusively, but Jeonghan knew he had him made when Woozi couldn’t help the faint tell that lit in his eyes.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” Jeonghan noted. “Back then. In the beginning.”

Woozi did not answer beyond a slight raise of his eyebrows in consideration.

Satisfied, Jeonghan imagined the house as he’d first found it under a cage of brush and vines. The cracks in the white stucco had exposed the stonework underneath. They had stood just a little further up the crooked way where the mailbox sat now in peaceful solitude. And Jeonghan imagined that long before the mailbox and the road, Woozi had kept watch over this house. 

“This was your place, wasn’t it?”

The mood did not sour so much as steady. After a moment of what seemed like contemplation, Woozi said, “I’d have been too young to remember, wouldn’t I?”

And that was answer enough. Jeonghan would have time to wonder at it. Time to ask questions. Time to answer them. Time for all of it. It was a new morning, and the house still stood down the crooked way at the bottom of the hill. Always the same and always different.

“You know, it’s funny. . .”

Surprised by Woozi’s sly tone, Jeonghan twisted to face him.

Not wavering in his long study of the house, Woozi said with a touch of knowing: “I’ve been thinking about how fortunate it is, in a way, that things turned out the way they did. I mean, Dino was the only one who could have helped defeat the demon.”

Jeonghan agreed. Perhaps too easily, because Woozi spared a telling smile.

“And really,” he continued, “the only way for Dino to show up when you need him is if someone were to die.” At last, Woozi broke his sharp eyes from the house and stared at Jeonghan. He seemed aware of his cleverness as he questioned, “Convenient, right?”

Jeonghan made a noise of acknowledgment toward Woozi’s sharp gaze, a smile flitting on his face try as he may to stop it. Woozi had always been more observant than the rest.

“You could say that.” Was all he made by way of answer, eyes passing up and over the chimneys to the impossible blue of the sky. So many autumns had passed by. So many summers and winters and springs. Each one strange and miraculous like the people who had been brought together across centuries, feeling almost complete yet far from finished.

And there on the walkway between autumn and home, he and Woozi stood staring up at the house, watched over and waiting: every last page a first in the village lost in time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N We earned it, ya'll. On to the next. <3

**Author's Note:**

> For new readers who would like to learn more: https://kayeblaise.tumblr.com/immortalstags


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